


Go Like Hell

by nik_knows_nothing



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Car Racing, F/M, MJ is good at what she does, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, The author knows literally nothing about car racing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: "You want to build a car that can beat Beck—beat the fastest car in the world—with a Jameson?""Right.""And how long did you tell them it would take? Two, three hundred years?""Ninety days."(A Ford vs. Ferrari AU in which Peter is trying not to lose his mind at all the corporate politicking, Ned is trying to figure out how to spin straw into gold, and MJ's really just trying not to lose her job.)
Relationships: Betty Brant/Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39





	Go Like Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Quick disclaimer: I like Brad, I really do, but he was willing to throw Peter under the bus to the trip chaperones, and that made him the best fit for the mostly-villainous character.
> 
> Also, I know so little about cars, y'all. Or car racing. Or really just anything in general, so if there's something that's ridiculously wrong, I'm very sorry and I hope you can still enjoy it anyways!

“This is a bad idea,” MJ says. “Tell me this isn’t a bad idea.” 

“This is a great idea,” Betty says, loyal as always. “This is a fantastic idea. So long as we—you know. So long as we keep it out of the press.”

“Right.” MJ smooths her hair back from her face, wonders if she should’ve straightened it after all. 

The decisions had all been made so quickly—there’d hardly been time to prepare—

They could do this.

They could totally do this.

“We kind of have to do this,” Betty points out, and MJ hadn’t realized she was repeating the words out loud. “Otherwise, you know—”

“I’m well aware,” MJ says. “Thanks, Betty.”

The other woman shrugs, and if it weren’t for the slight flutter to her hands as she straightens the folders in her arms, MJ would never know she was nervous, too.

A glint of light catches her eye, and MJ looks back towards the road just in time to see the gleaming sports cars that come gliding out of the ripple of heat on the road—

“Oh, God,” Betty mutters beside her, and MJ can’t help but agree.

The Beck cars are gorgeous, no doubt about it.

_ They’d have to be,  _ MJ thinks.  _ Beck only puts out a handful of cars every year, they coast by on reputation instead of sales— _

She cuts herself off mid-rant.

She’s not the one who has to be convinced, after all.

“This is going to work,” MJ says, one more time for good measure, and Betty nods eagerly. “Remind me again why this has to work?”

“Because if it doesn’t, Brad will take your job and act extremely apologetic while he tries to guilt you into sleeping with him?”

MJ looks at her.

Betty shrugs.

“Right,” MJ says at last. 

“But mostly the first part,” Betty says, helpful. “That’s probably the most important part, right?”

“Right.”

She glances at her phone, checks the time—Jameson promised he would be there for the initial pitch, she’d had to argue herself nearly hoarse in order to convince him that this was something he  _ needed  _ to be there for—

One by one, the Beck representatives emerge, and there are—an awful lot of photographers here.

Is that normal?

“That’s not normal,” Betty whispers, and MJ is trying really hard not to panic—

“There you all are!” 

Jameson really only has one volume setting, so it’s not a surprise when he comes in with arms outstretched, beaming ear to ear and voice absolutely booming—

The Beck representatives look a little taken aback, but then they’re smiling, too, and MJ finally lets herself breathe out.

“Mr. Jameson,” one of the men says, accent crisp and cool and sharp. “Right this way, if you please.”

They bundle Jameson into the front car, usher MJ and Betty into one of the following vehicles, and the man driving their car glances in the rearview mirror, smiles politely.

“Mr. Beck can’t  _ wait  _ to do business with you,” he says, and MJ’s got a really, really good feeling about this.

Here’s the thing: Jameson Motor Company is failing.

They’re just not flashy enough, not  _ cool  _ enough—basically, nobody under the age of fifty has even the slightest inclination to buy a Jameson car, and that  _ hurts. _

Unfortunately, it’s not like MJ can walk right into the meeting with the high-ranking executives and  _ say  _ that.

Instead, she’s had to be—a little bit nicer about it.

But only a very little.

“It’s not that Stark makes better cars,” she says, clicking through to the next slide on her PowerPoint—a PowerPoint, she made a freaking  _ PowerPoint  _ presentation, that’s how on-the-line her job is here—and fighting desperately to keep her tone polite, instead of incredulous. “It’s only that their public perception is newer. Shinier. More exciting.”

“So what?” Executive No. 15 demands, and MJ racks her mind to try and remember his name. “We need a better advertising campaign?”

“We could do that,” MJ allows. “But then we run the risk of being seen as—gimmicky. Faddish. Grasping after some long-expired youth instead of embracing new ideas.”

Distantly she considers that this particular crowd may take offense at the way she worded that, and she backpedals quickly.

“What I mean to say,” she rushes to clarify. “Is that I believe there’s a simpler way.”

The next slide on her presentation is a singe picture of a Beck racecar.

“Racing,” Executive No. 7 says, flat. “You think Jameson should go into racing.”

“We already are,” Executive No…Executive No.  _ Whatever  _ interjects before MJ can even open her mouth to respond. “Jameson has at least four cars on the track at each and every NASCAR event, no matter the season—”

“NASCAR,” MJ interjects, before he can work up a full head of steam. “Not exactly a world-class level of prestige, is it?”

The room murmurs, mutinous, but MJ plows ahead, determined to be optimistic.

If she focuses, she can see Betty sitting in the way back, giving her a thumbs-up and nodding encouragingly—

“Le Mans,” MJ says, and clicks through to her next slide before anyone can respond. “The toughest racetrack in the world, the cars that are virtually  _ synonymous  _ with glamor, intrigue—”

“The racetrack that’s utterly dominated by Beck Motorcars,” Executive No. Who-l-even-are-these-people cuts in. “Every year, Beck wins, and you want Jameson to try and compete with that in a matter of four months?”

“An excellent point,” MJ says, because it’s easier than saying  _ wait your damn turn to talk, you absolute jackwagon.  _ “And speaking of Beck Motorcars—”

The last slide probably violates a whole lot of confidentiality agreements, but it’s a full printout of Beck’s financials for the last five years, and there’s no doubt about it, they’re absolutely  _ bleeding  _ profit, and MJ’s been over the numbers a thousand times, and so has Betty, and Cindy down in accounting, and this is the way out, she  _ knows  _ it—

“I’m not suggesting that we try and compete with Beck,” she says, and pauses just long enough for Executives No. One through Seventeen to understand. “I’m suggesting that we buy them out completely.”

Now, watching as Quentin Beck and Jonah Jameson talk quietly over the hood of yet another glossy sports car, MJ’s not so certain.

“It’s going well, right?” Betty whispers beside her. “I mean, can you tell?”

“Shh,” MJ says, because one of the Beck reps is looking their way, curious, but then she can’t help herself, so she says, “I think so?”

It’s not exactly reassuring.

Betty doesn’t really look reassured.

MJ doesn’t blame her.

They stand there and watch the two men talk for a while, and it could be the sun beating down on the back of her neck, but MJ suddenly can’t help but feel nervous.

Something about this is off.

“Weren’t there more Beck reps here, just a second ago?” she hisses at Betty from the corner of her mouth. “When we first got here, weren’t there more of them?”

Betty sneaks a quick look around, counting the representatives.

“Some of the photographers are gone, too,” she hisses back, and MJ feels a chill down her spine, despite the heat.

Something about this is really, really off.

Beck and Jameson are headed back their way, though, and so MJ shakes off her nerves, straightens up and does her best to ignore the quickly-growing suspicion.

“I have to admit,” Beck says, smiling with all his teeth. “It sounds like a tremendous opportunity. But I’m afraid I still have some slight concerns—”

“Concerns?” Jameson—well, booms. “What concerns?”

“On the contract your company provided,” Beck says smoothly, and a rep pushes a copy of the file into his hand at once. “It mentions my racing operations.”

_ Shit. _

MJ had tried to talk them out of it, she’d really tried.

“If I need to increase the race budget,” Beck says, and Betty curses quietly under her breath. “I need to request authorization from Jameson Motor Company?”

“Well, you have to understand,” Jameson says, flustered. “You’re selling your company. You can’t expect to retain total control—”

“So if I wished to go to—Le Mans, for example,” Beck says, still smiling. “And you didn’t want me to race. Would I still be able to go?”

“Well,” Jameson says. “If we can’t agree—in that scenario—then yes. No. I mean, that would be correct. You wouldn’t go.”

The smile vanishes from off Beck’s face.

“I see,” he says, icy and calm.

MJ has to bite back the urge to scream into her briefcase.

“Well?” Jameson asks, bombastic as always. “What do you say, Quentin?”

For a second, Beck just considers him.

Then he smiles, one more time, and there’s no warmth to it at all.

“I say, go back to New York,” he says. “Go back to your big ugly factory that makes its little ugly cars. And don’t you dare talk back to me again until you think you can make a pitch without insulting my integrity as a designer, as a constructor, as an  _ artist _ —”

He pauses, sucks in a breath through his teeth.

“That’s what I have to say,  _ Jonah, _ ” he nearly hisses. “How’s that for a deal?”

Jameson is furious.

It’s not exactly a surprise.

They don’t even make it back to the hotel before he’s cursing up a storm over the phone, and the Beck drivers are clearly trying very hard not to laugh while MJ does her best to disappear into the admittedly luxurious seats—

It’s just a matter of time before he remembers whose idea this was.

_ Oh, God,  _ she thinks miserably as the cars pull up to the curb outside the hotel.  _ Brad’s totally going to steal my job. _

There’s an executive meeting scheduled before the elevator stops at her floor, and MJ adds it to her calendar with a grim sense of foreboding.

“Great,” she says out loud into the empty hotel room. “Can’t wait to get fired in front of the entire C-Suite.”

Things can’t get much worse.

And then they do.

The next morning, her phone is buzzing with notifications, and she swipes to unlock the screen without any real sense of optimism—

Five seconds later, she’s sitting bolt upright in bed, jaw slack with horror, scrolling desperately through headline after headline after headline—

_ Beck Motorcars Sold to Stark Industries,  _ one headline screams, and the subtitle underneath is the final nail in the coffin—

_ Beck retains full control. _

Her phone begins to shake with an incoming call, and MJ almost hangs up until she realizes it’s Betty—

“We’re screwed,” Betty says, sounding as sick as MJ feels, and MJ shakes her head, miserable.

“Don’t worry,” she says, hollow. “Not  _ we.  _ Just me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Betty says. “Everyone who ever looked at this project is going down in a burning wreck.”

“Poetic,” MJ says. “Also, unhelpful.”

She puts Betty on speaker, scrolls through one article without really reading it, and then follows the link to another write-up of the sale—

“Jameson’s going to lose his mind,” Betty says. “Oh, God, there’s that meeting as soon as we get back to the States—”

“Don’t worry,” MJ says again, barely listening to herself. “Push comes to shove, I’ll fall on the sword for the team, I guess.”

“MJ—”

“I always wondered what it would be like to get totally blacklisted.”

“MJ, come on,” Betty says. “We’ll think of something.”

“So will  _ Brad, _ ” MJ says darkly.

“No,” Betty says. “No, stop that, we’ll find a way out—”

“I have to go,” MJ says. “We’ll talk on the flight back. I’m gonna—I have to think—”

Today is Saturday.

Their flight leaves on Sunday, and the meeting’s first thing Monday morning.

MJ drags a hand down the side of her face, wonders grimly how many hours out of the next forty-eight or so she’s going to sleep.

Probably five, if she’s lucky.

She’s not lucky.

She ends up with three.

So yeah, she thinks.

This’ll be great.

“Sir,” Brad Davis says, polished and looking like he’s slept eight hours every night of his life. “The Beck buyout was a misstep, but Jameson Motor Company can still recover—”

“Recover?” Jameson roars, and Brad actually takes half a step back. “Beck  _ used  _ the publicity of the Jameson name to pull the rug right out from under us! Tell me, Davis, how exactly are we supposed to  _ recover  _ from that?”

MJ watches Brad flail with only the mildest twinge of sympathy.

It’s not his fault he’s a professional ladder-climber.

She does sort of wish he wasn’t gunning for her position with  _ quite  _ the usual level of zeal, but whatever, it’s fine.

“There are other options,” Brad says. “We should consider other advertising approaches, try and appeal to a younger demographic—”

MJ rolls her eyes.

Unfortunately, Brad sees her do it.

Even more unfortunately, so does Jameson.

“Oh, is that a problem, Miss Jones?” he demands. “You’ve been awfully quiet all morning, any more  _ brilliant  _ ideas you want to pitch to the team?”

“No, sir,” MJ grits out, and he scoffs.

“That’s what I thought,” he growls to no one in particular. “Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable, I’ve got a team of the brightest minds in the business, and no one can explain to me how we end up getting  _ completely screwed over  _ by a company that sells  _ thirty cars a year!” _

MJ takes a deep breath, holds it for five seconds, and then breathes out slowly.

There’s only one way she could come up with, in all her forty-eight hours of sleepless, over-caffeinated terror.

Only one solution.

Betty catches her eye, shakes her head.

MJ ignores her.

“Actually, sir,” she says, and twists her fingers together to keep her hands from shaking. “They only sold twenty-nine last year.”

The silence in the conference room is deafening.

Jameson, quieter than she’s ever heard him in her life, says, “What.”

It isn’t a question.

Brad’s looking at her like she’s lost her mind.

“Beck used us,” MJ says, and forces her voice to sound lower, angrier, to match Jameson’s own tranquil rage. “He used us as an opportunity to up his price, to embarrass our company, to insult your leadership—”

“Exactly,” Brad interjects, and MJ thinks absently that one of these days, she’s just going to haul off and hit him. “Buying Beck was a bad idea from the start—”

“We can’t buy him out,” MJ agrees. “But he only had the nerve to say those things to your face because he thought we couldn’t beat him.”

Jameson stares at her, and she can see the cogs in his brain beginning to turn.

_ Careful,  _ she thinks.  _ Careful— _

“He insulted our cars,” she says, and mimics Jameson’s pose, rigid and tense. “Insulted our process. Our ability to produce a winning car—”

Betty narrows her eyes.

“Sir,” MJ says. “There’s only one way to show the world what a mistake he made.” 

There’s a moment of silence in the conference room.

_ Could go either way,  _ MJ thinks.  _ Oh, God— _

The moment stretches longer and longer, almost unbearable—

“I want the best engineers,” Jameson says, and MJ is too terrified to breathe. “The best drivers. I don’t care what it costs. We’re gonna build a race car that will bury that greasy, good-for-nothing, devious little  _ bastard _ a hundred feet deep.”

MJ’s still not breathing.

It’s distinctly possible that she’s forgotten how.

“A hundred feet,” Jameson says again. “A hundred feet deep under the finish line at Le Mans. And I will be there to watch it. This isn’t business. This is  _ war. _ ”

A bit dramatic, MJ supposes.

But it gets the point across.

“How are you not dead?” Betty demands, once the conference has finally ended and MJ has somehow made her way back to her desk. “I thought for sure you were dead.”

“I’m not so sure I’m not,” MJ says, too numb with shock and relief to cringe at the grammar of the statement. “Here, check my pulse.”

She holds out her arm, and Betty presses her fingers to the inside of her wrist, times it off for a few seconds with an appropriately grave expression.

“Nope,” she says at last. “Somehow, you’re still alive. Have you breathed out once since you started talking in there?”

“I don’t think so,” MJ admits. “I should probably get around to that sooner or later.”

“Probably sooner.”

“Yeah, probably.”

All at once, the enormity of what she’s just done hits her in a wave.

Three months.

They have three months to create a racecar—a perfect racecar—literally the best racecar in the world—

And she’s just tied her entire career to the project’s success.

“Oh, God,” she says, slumping over the desk. “Oh my God, Betty, where do we even start?”

“Drinks,” Betty says, and MJ groans. “Okay, not drinks. We need—God, I guess we need a designer? I know the Jameson office in Galveston—”

“We can’t use in-house designers,” MJ says, suddenly certain. “We’ve been using in-house experts for the last twenty years, and it hasn’t been enough.”

Betty perches on MJ’s desk, brow furrowed in thought, and MJ scrambles to remember a name—any name—anyone at all who would be able to help—

No, not just anyone.

They need the best.

It has to be the very best.

For a few moments, there’s an awful, hopeless silence, and MJ’s doing her best to stave off visions of Brad dancing on her corporate grave when Betty suddenly sucks in a breath, straightens up like she’s just gotten an electric shock—

“What?” MJ demands. “You just remembered something? You look like you just remembered something. Betty, tell me you just remembered something.”

“It’s kind of a long shot,” Betty says, slow and careful, and MJ’s about ten seconds from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her until she talks—“But how much do you know about Ned Leeds?”

So  _ really,  _ that’s where it all really starts.

Ned Leeds used to be a racer himself.

MJ vaguely remembers hearing something about it, during the three hellish months that she worked under the racecar development division at Jameson—there was something about a heart condition, and so he’d had to quit—

Now, though, he mostly works on building new cars—or tweaking the cars he already has—

“But they’re  _ fast _ ,” Betty says, with an edge of something almost like hope in her voice. “MJ, the cars he builds are  _ fast. _ ”

And that’s all MJ needs.

It doesn’t matter if the car falls to pieces the second it crosses the finish line, they just need something that can go faster than anything Beck can build.

Twenty-four hours.

They just need twenty-four hours of the fastest car in the world.

Ned Leeds’s showroom is located just outside of Fort Worth, and MJ sighs at the humidity that smacks her in the face the second she gets off the plane.

“Texas, our Texas,” she says grimly, and Betty says, “All hail the mighty State.”

It takes an hour to get out to the showroom, and MJ’s first impression isn’t exactly encouraging.

Looks aren’t everything, of course, but it’s a little difficult to think  _ this is the group that will help us build the fastest car in the world _ when the first salesperson to see the two of them visibly pales and whispers something to his associate before bolting off into the back office.

Ned Leeds emerges a second later, and MJ looks him over, tries to drum up some of the reckless optimism she’d felt on the flight over—

“Afternoon,” Leeds says, round face beaming with a practiced smile. “Can I help you?”

“Ned Leeds?” MJ asks, just to be certain, and his smile becomes just a little bit less polished.

“Maybe,” he says.

“Michelle Jones,” MJ says, and waves to Betty. “Betty Brant. We’re from Jameson Motor.”

Leeds glances between the two of them, and his smile vanishes altogether.

“Listen,” he says, quiet and urgent. “I know we owe Jameson for the last batch of engines, but we’re really killing it on the track lately, and if you’ll just bear with us—”

“Mr. Leeds,” MJ says. “I’m here on behalf of  _ Mr.  _ Jameson.”

Leeds stops mid-excuse, clearly caught off guard.

“Suppose,” MJ says. “Suppose, hypothetically, Mr. Jameson wanted to win the 24 hours of Le Mans? What exactly would that take?”

Ned Leeds settles back, looks between the two of them once more.

“It would take something money can’t buy,” he says at last, and MJ almost smiles at that.

“Money can buy a lot of things, Mr. Leeds,” she says. “Speed, for example? That’s really why Miss Brant and I came here to talk to you about.”

He considers them.

There are a few clients milling about the showroom floor, and Leeds glances at them, looks back at her.

“Why don’t we step into the office?” he says.

MJ feels her face curl into something almost like a smile.

“The thing is,” Ned says, once they’re all comfortably seated. “It’s not just about speed.”

MJ’s aware of this.

She’s been over the racetrack maps at least five times since they boarded their flight to DFW.

Three and a half miles of country road—narrow, ungraded, rough.

No rails. 

No camber on the turns.

Three hundred laps for twenty-four hours, average speed of 150.

She doesn’t point any of this out to Ned.

He knows it already.

Of course he does.

He’s the only American driver to ever come  _ close  _ to winning.

But that was years ago, and his heart won’t let him back in another race.

So here they are.

“It’s dark,” Ned says now. “It’s raining. Slower cars coming at you out of the fog. You see an upturned car, and the driver’s pouring blood—maybe you know him. Maybe he’s a friend. Maybe he’s on fire.”

MJ winces at that.

She doesn’t mean to, doesn’t want to show any reaction to a speech that is clearly designed to scare her, but she just can’t help it.

“You’re exhausted,” Ned presses on. “You’re hungry, you can’t remember your name, can’t remember what country you’re in, and all of a sudden, you realize you’re doing 198, and if at any point, you blow a gasket—a five cent washer—the whole thing’s over.”

_ Well, yeah,  _ MJ thinks.

That’s kind of what she’s afraid of.

“It’s over,” Ned says. “Beck wins again. Like they won last year. And the year before that and the year before that and the year before that—”

MJ takes a moment to think that over.

It’s certainly the worst case scenario, she’ll grant him that.

Ned’s watching her, and so is Betty, and part of her wants to stomp her feet and complain that she didn’t want this responsibility, she’s only trying to save her own job, save Betty’s job, save everyone who ever helped her come up with this stupid idea in the first place—

MJ steeples her fingers, leans forward and fixes Ned with a stare she’s been told is mildly terrifying.

“So you’re saying you don’t think we can do it?” she asks, and refuses to look away. “You’re saying Jameson—isn’t capable of winning a race like that, even with a brilliant partner?”

That makes him pause, and MJ twists the knife just a little bit further.

“Even if we wrote a blank check?”

Ned hesitates, and MJ knows—she  _ knows— _

They’ve got him.

“I’m saying you can’t buy a win,” Ned says, and then he smiles, and MJ doesn’t let herself sag into the chair in relief, doesn’t let herself slump and breathe out and relax.

They don’t need to buy a win.

That’s fine.

If they can’t afford that, that’s fine.

But—

“ _ But,” _ Ned says at last, and MJ almost laughs out loud, because she knows he’s thinking the same exact thing. “But maybe you can buy the driver who’ll get you your best shot at one.”

Peter Parker hasn’t won a race in years.

It’s a simple fact, turned up by a simple Google search, and MJ knows that Ned knows more than her about the specific who’s-who of car racing, but it’s an awful lot to take on faith.

“So you want to build a car,” Parker says, looking between Ned and MJ with a deeply doubtful expression. “A car that can beat Quentin Beck.”

“Yes,” Ned says.

“With a Jameson,” Parker says. “A  _ Jameson.  _ No offense.”

“None taken,” MJ says, and Ned says, “Yes.”

Parker nods, thinking it over. 

“And—how long did you tell them it would take?” he asks, speaking primarily to Ned. “Two hundred years? Three hundred?”

“Ninety days,” MJ says, and Parker stares.

“Ninety days,” he echoes. “Ninety days as in three months?”

MJ makes a show of counting up the days in her head, and then nods.

“More or less,” she says, and Parker laughs, startled and humorless.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, let’s just—let’s just think this through, yeah? Forget the time, forget the ninety days. Let’s say you have all the time in the world—all the money in the world—”

“Well, you’re half right,” MJ says, and Ned says, “Well, I think the money part’s more or less covered—”

Parker waves them away.

“Ned,” he says, quiet and serious. “Do you really think the  _ Jameson Motor Company  _ is going to let you build the car you want, the way you want it?  _ Jameson?  _ Again, ma’am, no offense.”

“Again, none taken,” MJ says, because she’s still having nightmares of walking into her office in time to watch Brad put his nameplate on the door.

This isn’t going exactly the way she’d wanted it to.

It’s alright.

It’ll be fine.

Just a few minor adjustments, she can still get the plan back on track.

_ Good cop, bad cop, _ she thinks absently, only half listening as Ned and Parker argue back and forth.

She tunes back in for the end part, though.

Just long enough to hear the part that matters.

“It can’t be done,” Parker says, and to his credit, he really does sound sorry. “Ned, it isn’t going to work, and you know it.”

“Peter, come on,” Ned says. “I could really use your help on this, man.”

“You shouldn’t need my help at all, Ned. You shouldn’t even be considering this.”

“Peter—”

“I can’t,” Parker says, and then the alarm on his phone rings, and he glances down at it where it rests on the table, like he’d almost forgotten it was there. “I’m sorry, Ned. Sorry, Miss Jones. But I have to get back to work.”

He slides out of the booth, and Ned makes like he’s going to follow him out, but MJ holds out a hand to stop him, and so they sit there, quiet and miserable, as Parker leaves the tiny little LA diner and goes back to his job in the garage across the street.

_ Alright,  _ MJ thinks.  _ Time for Plan B. _

Parker’s the last one working in the garage.

It’s not a surprise.

Given what she knows about his whole situation, it’s not much of a surprise at all.

When MJ slips through the door, the garage is mostly quiet, with only the hum of music from his phone where it rests on the hood of the old truck that’s up on the lift—

MJ looks around, finds an old stool, and drags it quietly over to the side of the truck, perches there and waits for the song to end.

“I thought the garage closed at six,” she says, conversational, and Parker slams his head into the undercarriage of the truck, chokes back at least six different variations on the same profanity, and emerges a second later, red-faced and looking vaguely shell-shocked.

MJ raises an eyebrow, and he sighs.

“Let me guess,” he says, sounding impossibly tired for someone her own age. “You’re here to try and change my mind.”

MJ shrugs.

There’s not much point in denying it.

“I’ve got a lot riding on this,” she admits. “My own job, obviously, but a lot of other people, too.”

Parker looks at her for a long moment, and then he sits up on the little sliding cart that she’s never really learned the name of, rests his elbows on his knees.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s kind of what I’m afraid of.”

MJ waves for him to continue.

“Everyone’s got a lot riding on this,” he says. “And the second it doesn’t work, who do you think is going to get the blame?”

_ Realistically, me,  _ MJ thinks, but she doesn’t say it, because Parker’s clearly working towards something here.

“Ned’s an optimist,” he says. “He really wants to believe that Jameson’s fully behind this. When they throw him under the bus—I mean, his showroom’s already struggling. Something like this could absolutely ruin him.”

(Parker hasn’t won a race in years.

A simple Google search—

It was an experimental car, but everyone on the development team agreed that it was the driver’s fault—

There’s a reason Parker’s here, working in a crappy little garage.)

MJ considers him.

“Would it help if I told you this came all the way from the top?” she asks. “Jameson’s serious about this, and he’s looking to spend serious money.”

Parker laughs.

“Of course he is,” he says. “Because someone told him it was possible.”

“You don’t think it is?”

“I think Ned’s one of my oldest friends,” Parker says. “And I don’t really want to be the one who helps put him in a place like this.”

MJ looks around at the garage, thinks it over.

She could bring up the payment again, the consultation fee, maybe really tighten the screws and mention his aunt’s medical bills and the little apartment on the other side of town—

“This Sunday,” she says instead, standing and smoothing the wrinkles out of her jacket. “They’re launching the new Mythic. Announcing the race program. You should come by, check it out.”

Parker looks up at her, and he almost—almost smiles.

“If I do,” he says. “Am I going to get kidnapped, drugged, and wake up Monday back in New York?”

MJ pretends to consider it.

“I don’t  _ think  _ so,” she says at last. “But you should come take a look. Listen to Ned’s speech. He’ll get a real kick out of it, if nothing else.”

She moves the stool back to its original spot, knocks once on the hood of the truck, and leaves without waiting for a real response. 

The press conference is a total nightmare.

There are reporters everywhere, and about twice as many executives, and the combination is enough to set MJ’s teeth on edge, but she can’t make herself leave, not just yet.

“What if Parker doesn’t show?” Betty asks, and MJ wishes the other woman weren’t quite so good at saying the exact thing she’s thinking.

“He’ll show,” she promises. “He’ll at least show up to support Ned.”

Betty doesn’t look convinced.

The new Mythic is gleaming up on its display, and MJ saw Brad hovering around it like a hummingbird, flitting from reporter to reporter and doing his level best to get his name linked to every write-up on the launch.

MJ’s tired just watching him.

She thinks she should go over, try and rein him in, at least try and get him to tone it down for, like, five minutes to let the actual design team get a word in edgewise.

It’s not her job.

But she finds herself drifting that way, purely on some undefined instinct.

So that means she gets a front-row seat to what happens.

“Excuse me, sir,” Brad calls, just loud enough for a few other people to notice and look on. “Sir, could you please keep your hands off the paintwork?”

“Oh, God,” MJ mutters, and she starts pushing her way through the crowd, desperate to avoid another embarrassing PR incident—

The man inspecting the car straightens up, and MJ’s heart plummets.

“No problem,” Parker says. “And who are you?”

Brad puffs himself up, fully aware of the crowd. “Brad Davis. Senior Executive President Jameson Motor Company, special responsibility for the Mythic launch—”

“Okay,” Parker says. “So at least we know who’s responsible.”

“Excuse me?”

“Listen, no offense, Bret—”

“Brad.”

“Brad,” Parker says, easy as anything. “It looks—really nice. Especially for a cheap car dressed up to fool the public.”

Brad swells with rage. “If you think—”

“ _ I  _ think,” Parker says. “If you cut the idiotic transmission setup, shortened the wheelbase, somehow lost half a ton of weight, and lowered the price, then you might have a decent starting point. But I’d still probably go with a Stark Homecoming.”

Brad goes nearly apoplectic just as MJ latches onto Parker’s arm, smiling too wide in a desperate attempt to diffuse the situation.

“Mr. Parker,” she says through clenched teeth. “So nice to see you here!”

Parker smiles back, innocent, like he hadn’t noticed the reporters eagerly scribbling down his every word.

“Yeah, well,” he says cheerfully, and lets her pull him away. “Someone told me I should at least check it out.”

Ned’s nervous for his speech.

MJ  _ wasn’t _ nervous, not really, because she’s been to a thousand of these things before, and it’s not like people really remember the speeches later.

Except then Parker went and did  _ that  _ to Brad, and now Brad’s out for blood.

He pulls her aside right before Ned’s about to go on, talks at her for way too long about some of the concerns that the executive group has, their worries that Leeds may not be the best fit for the new racing vision—

And now MJ’s mentally cursing him with every breath she takes, because now  _ she’s  _ worried, too.

“Ned, listen,” she says, and she hates herself for having to do this. “It’s not that they don’t trust you to build the car—”

“It’s in the contract,” Ned says, confused, and MJ can feel Parker’s eyes on the back of her head. “I take responsibility for day to day practical affairs of the race team. That’s in the contract.”

“Day to day,” MJ agrees. “But they’re going to be looking for any reason to assume—larger control. Do you understand?”

“No,” Ned says. “Not really.”

“Do not give them a reason to take control,” MJ says. “I can get us both through this, but I need you to trust me.”

“You mean say what you tell me to say,” Ned says slowly. “Toe the company line.”

“I mean  _ trust me. _ ”

So things aren’t great, by the time Ned starts into his speech.

“I was ten years old,” Ned’s saying up on the podium, and Parker is standing a few rows back, listening attentively. “When my dad told me that if I loved what I did, I’d be a lucky man, ‘cause I’d never work a day in my life.”

He’s laying the  _ aw-shucks  _ routine on a little thick, but if it works, it works.

“Now maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not,” he says, thoughtful. “But I do know that there are a few—a very lucky few—who find something that they  _ have  _ to do.”

He’s looking at Parker.

“Something that obsesses them,” Ned continues. "If they can’t do it, it’s the thing that’ll drive them right out of their mind.”

(MJ thinks of the pictures she saw, the fiery crash and the vitriolic writeups, afterward—)

“I am that man,” Ned says, and a few people in the audience cheer. “And I know one other man who feels exactly the same way. And that man—"

He doesn’t look away from Parker for a second, not even for a second, until he does.

He looks right at her, and MJ realizes she’s holding her breath.

“And that man,” Ned says. “Is Mr. Jonah Jameson. Together, we’re going to make the fastest cars in the world, and we’re going to make history at Le Mans—”

MJ breathes out, catches the briefest glimpse of Brad looking annoyed, and has just enough time to feel relieved.

But Parker’s gone by the time she looks back.

She doesn’t blame him one bit.

Jameson loves it.

Of course he does.

He basks in the reflected glow from Ned’s speech, and the reporters eat up the story—the automobile juggernaut teaming up with a tiny little former racecar driver to build a car that will topple some of the biggest names in racing—

They finally get that blank check.

They get that blank check, and MJ and Ned and Betty give themselves night to be relieved, to celebrate the little victory, and then they get to work.

They leave the next morning for London, and from there they go to Germany, to Italy, talking to every major car company that will take them, cashing in every favor that Jameson Motor Company was ever owed.

“This,” Ned says, gesturing wildly at the chassis of the car in front of them. “We need something like this, but simpler.”

“Changes to the drive train need approval from Jameson Advanced Vehicles in New York,” MJ says, apologetic, and he scowls.

“What if we cut the different positions for the spoiler?” he suggests. “Drop it to the lowest spline, right here—”

“Changes to aero need approval from Jameson Aeronautics Labs in—”

“In New York,” Ned guesses, and she shrugs. “If we need to swap the gearbox—”

“Committee,” MJ says.

“In New York?”

“Where else?”

Ned sighs, and MJ feels his frustration, she really does.

Everything here is by committee, every last change to the design—

_ Blank check,  _ she thinks, and plucks at the first desperate thread of an idea.

“Crate it all up,” she says, and turns to go, already tapping out a memo on her phone. “Get it ready for shipment. Betty, get on the phone with Berlin, see if we can’t get an order placed for the Specter—”

“MJ,” Betty says. “We can’t—”

“We’ve got 83 days to Le Mans,” MJ reminds her. “We need a working prototype in two weeks. It’ll take two weeks just to fill out the forms for committee.”

“Oh,” Betty says, and then, understanding, “ _ Oh. _ ”

Ned looks between the two of them. “Where are we shipping it to?”

“Not New York,” MJ says, and pulls up the number for the factory they visited in France. “83 days left, people.”

They tear each car to pieces as soon as it lands in Fort Worth, cannibalize the parts and pass each piece under a microscope for fourteen days—

At the end of two weeks, they’ve got a car.

It isn’t very pretty.

It doesn’t even look like a cohesive car.

It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of cobbled-together pieces and half-formed ideas—

But they’ve got a car, and it works, and MJ thinks it might even work  _ well _ —

Now all they need is the driver.

“Thirty minutes,” MJ says, and Parker looks supremely unconvinced. “All we need is thirty minutes.”

“I already told you,” Parker says, looking tired, and he’s still got grease across his forehead where he hadn’t looked in a mirror before leaving the garage. “I already said—”

“Thirty minutes,” MJ promises. “Trust me, you’re going to want to see this.”

He’s curious.

At the very least, he’s curious.

The runway from LA to DFW is closed for the night.

Well, at least, it’s closed for air traffic.

“All we need’s an opinion,” Ned says, and Parker looks just a little bit suspicious. “One drive, and we just need your opinion. Then you’ll be done, and I won’t ask again.”

Parker’s far too trusting.

It’s probably his fatal flaw.

“My opinion,” Parker says, and MJ says, “That’s all.”

The car starts up with a growl, and if MJ didn’t know better, she would  _ swear  _ Parker almost smiles at the sound.

Then he stomps on the gas, and the car burns away, a blur tearing across the moonlit surface of the runway—

He’s pushing the car.

Harder than he needs to, probably a little harder than it  _ should  _ go, but MJ can hear the roar of the engine from across the empty space, hears a horrible whining noise as Parker forces a gear change, tries again—

The back end is shifting wildly, and MJ winces a little, because Ned had warned them about that, but they hadn’t had the  _ time  _ to fix it, they’ve only got a matter of weeks—

The car snarls its way to a stop, and Parker’s out of the driver’s seat before it’s even stopped moving.

“Well?” Ned demands, and MJ can’t bring herself to speak.

“It’s awful,” Parker says. “Doesn’t track—third gear’s too high, torque isn’t even reaching the front pavement, and the steering is loose because the front end’s too light. Go an inch above 140—”

“And it wants to take off,” Ned agrees.

“And it wants to take off,” Parker says.

But the engine’s still running, and Parker’s gaze is drifting back to the open runway once more.

The engine’s still running—

“Let me just—” Parker says, and Ned’s trying his best to hide a smile.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

“Just one more go,” Parker says, and he slips back into the driver’s seat, floors it—

“Well,” Ned says, and MJ lets out a shaky breath. “Well, we needed a driver.”

They’re there for a lot longer than thirty minutes.

And the car is just  _ awful, _ Ned and Parker both agree, there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done—

But Ned and MJ stand there for three and a half hours, watching Parker tear his way around and around the empty runway, and MJ tracks the car until her eyes are too tired, and it’s hardly anything more than a blur of speed.

For the first time since Ned’s speech, she considers the idea that this might actually be possible.

They build the garage right there in LA.

It’s easier to keep using the runway than it is to try and build a track somewhere else.

Besides, the airport was planning to shut the runway down for renovations, and they’re more than happy to take the generous payout from Jameson Motor Company to hold off on those renovations for a few more weeks.

Just a few more weeks now.

MJ can’t remember the last time she got a full night’s sleep—they usually don’t manage to fix each new round of upgrades until late in the day, and then they’ve got to test it—and she’s pretty sure that about half her bloodstream is made up of coffee at this point, but they’re getting there.

They’re getting closer.

Betty’s splitting her time between LA and New York, because Jameson is rolling out some new model for their NASCAR teams, and if MJ had the time or the energy to be mad about it, she’d be furious that Jameson can’t be bothered to give the same level of special attention to the Jameson-Leeds racing team, but it’s fine, it’s all totally fine, she’s totally cool.

And they’re still getting closer.

There are only two weeks left, and Ned’s starting to panic.

“It’s not the engine,” he says, and MJ  _ knows  _ that, knows the engine is pretty much flawless, at this point. “It’s just that we can’t redesign the body from scratch, not this close to the deadline.”

“So what?” Parker says. “So we just call it? That’s it?”

For someone who didn’t want to do this—and still ostensibly doesn’t, whenever someone asks—Parker’s become the program’s strongest defender.

MJ still hasn’t pointed it out, because she’s not going to risk him going out of his way to deny it.

It’s just a little bit funny, that’s all.

But they’ve got the engine, and now they just need someplace to  _ put  _ it, since it’s somehow turned into this hulking monster of a machine that won’t fit under the standard car hood, and it can be the most powerful engine in the world, but it won’t do them any good without a shell to house it—

MJ’s phone buzzes with a text from Betty—her plane’s just landed in New York, and she’s complaining about a meeting she’s got with the developers for the Jameson Vagabond—

“Hold that thought,” MJ tells Ned and Parker, and she hits the little phone icon by Betty’s name.

Betty picks up on the third ring, growls, “Do you have any idea what time it is—”

“Betty,” MJ says, and doesn’t bother trying to sound persuasive. “ _ Elizabeth.  _ How would you maybe feel about going behind Jameson’s back?”

“I wouldn’t,” Betty says, immediate. “I love my job. I love our company. I love our glorious leader. Long may he reign.”

MJ waits.

After a full fifteen seconds, Betty sighs.

“Fine,” she says. “Okay, fine, let’s get this over with. Tell me what you need.”

The stolen Vagabond shell is gorgeous.

MJ knows more about cars than she did ninety-ish days ago, but not nearly as much as she probably should, considering the project she’s heading—

And even she can tell that the car looks  _ great. _

They’ve got one of the prototype engines hooked up to—some other sort of machine—and they’re all wearing heavy ear protection, but the rumbling growl is still enough to rattle all their teeth.

Their engine is about fifty-two pounds lighter than the typical NASCAR unit—fifty-two pounds lighter but about half again as large.

It shouldn’t fit.

In all honesty, when Betty finally managed to arrange for the shell transfer, MJ had a brief panic attack over the idea that it might not fit.

No one at the garage has slept in the last seventy-two hours.

Ned and Parker and the mechanics who follow their every word with an almost cult-like devotion, they’ve worked around the clock to pare away any unnecessary bulk while MJ hid every last record of the transaction, buried the transfer of the car’s shell, cleaned up every complaint or comment that could possibly be traced back to her deal with Betty—

And now they’ve got a car.

The shell is still unpainted, relatively unfinished, and it was the only one Betty thought she could get away with sending their way—

_ Transferred,  _ MJ tells herself, because it sounds a lot better than  _ stealing. _

It has to work.

This has to work.

They’re running out of time.

If Jameson finds out they took the shell from another branch of the company, there’ll be hell to pay—

But if it works—

_ If it works,  _ MJ thinks, and tries not to think about how much of a gamble this is all becoming.

If it works, they might get another few weeks of breathing room.

If it works, they might just get a chance to build the car their way.

This close to the deadline, MJ spends most of her time fielding increasingly unsubtle inquiries from the Jameson board of directors, from the analytics team who want to know when they can check the progress of the project, from every last member of that executive group who sat in on her very first pitch—

Parker spends most of his free time talking through each new iteration of the Catalyst while she listens with half an ear, and she’s grateful for it, since she hasn’t been able to watch the test runs for the last two weeks, she’s been too busy putting out fires—

This has to work.

They’re running out of time.

The engine in the garage is still rumbling, but there’s a tremendous growl from outside, a cheer from the assembled team, and MJ breathes in, out, and in again.

The engine’s in the car.

They’ve got a car.

She closes her computer and goes to watch as Parker slides easily into the driver’s seat, revs the engine, and laughs out loud at its answering roar.

One week before Le Mans, Brad shows up in LA.

MJ walks into her office, sees him sitting behind her desk, and she almost turns around and walks right back out again.

“What are you doing here?” she asks instead, and Brad smiles, so open and friendly and honest that she would almost believe it if she didn’t know him.

“Thought I’d drop by to hear your thoughts on a few planning decisions,” he says, cheerful as anything, and nods at Ned when he pokes his head in, curious. “Personnel for Le Mans.”

MJ studies him, suspicious.

“It’s a great lineup,” she says, because it is—all of the drivers they’ve picked to represent Jameson are fantastic. “Parker, Thompson, Hill, Carter—”

Brad’s smile doesn’t waver for an instant.

“Hill’s a lock,” he agrees. “Carter. Thompson, too.”

MJ understands at once.

Ned stiffens beside her, and she knows he gets it, too.

“Now, Parker,” Brad says, and his smile shifts into an expression of affected regret. “Parker, we’re less sure about.”

Outside, MJ can hear the Catalyst snarling its way around the track, can still see the way Parker had laughed the first time it started up.

“We like Thompson for Parker’s slot,” Brad says, like he can’t recognize the expression that she’s fighting to keep off her face. “Move Thompson to Parker’s slot, maybe fill Thompson’s slot with—I don’t know, Gregory?”

“If Jameson wants a win,” MJ says, as polite as she can manage. “Then he wants a driver who knows the car. That’s Parker.”

Brad hums, sympathetic. 

“MJ,” he says. “You and I may not know all that much about racing—certainly not as much as you, Mr. Leeds—but we do know people. Jameson—Jameson means  _ reliability.  _ Dependability. And we’re just not sure that Parker is a Jameson man.”

Out on the runway, the engine shrieks as the Catalyst tears around another curve—MJ hears a cheer from the crowd outside, wonders if they’re pushing another speed record—Parker said he thought they would clear another record today—

“When we first started,” Ned says, and MJ jolts back to the conversation at hand. “Miss Jones asked what money couldn’t buy. The answer is a real, pure racer behind the wheel. And that’s Peter. It has to be—”

“Be that as it may,” Brad says. “We’re a little worried that he might be— _ too _ pure.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Say he wins. And some reporter raises a mic, asks him for his honest opinion on the car. Say there’s some tiny little detail he doesn’t like, and millions are watching—do you trust Mr. Parker not to send the wrong message to millions of potential buyers?”

“Brad,” MJ says, because she’s heard this kind of speech before. “Tell me this isn’t because he made you look stupid at the convention.”

Brad hesitates, just a beat too long.

“Parker stays,” she says. “If that’s a problem, take it up with Jameson.”

He will, of course.

Take it up with Jameson, that is.

Brad’s good at what he does, and he’s petty, and he’ll hold onto a grudge forever, once he’s got the idea in his head.

So he will take it up with Jameson.

It’s just a matter of time.

“If he forces the issue,” Ned asks later that night, after Parker’s gone back out onto the track for  _ one more lap. _ “Will you agree to it?”

MJ looks over at him, blinks past the growing headache that’s starting to cloud her vision.

“If I do,” she says. “Will you walk?”

Ned thinks it over.

“Probably not,” he admits. “We’ve come this far, and I really do want to win.”

“So do I,” MJ says. “It’s just a matter of what we’re willing to give up to make it happen.”

The worst part is, she knows that Parker will step down.

If they ask him to, if he’s convinced that it’ll help Ned, he’ll take the hit, no problem.

That’s what makes it so unfair.

They get another five days before the call comes down the line.

Jameson calls her personally.

There’s nothing she can do.

MJ hangs up the phone and sits at her desk for a few more minutes, feeling stunned.

Then she takes a deep breath, wishes she still had the jacket that she left in New York, the one that kind of feels like a suit of armor, and goes to find Parker.

He smiles when he sees her, waves her over to point out some new quirk that they’ve added to the car, and MJ forces herself to smile back, nod along like she’s actually paying attention.

Usually, she is.

She likes hearing about this stuff, likes the way that Parker goes out of his way to make sure she understands every last technical detail.

“Problem is,” he’s saying now. “At that height, we were getting too much drag under the car, so we fixed that by lowering it, but now it’s only thirty-eight inches high, and that’s too short, and they measure before the race. So what we’re going to do is use wedges here and here, lift the suspension two inches higher—”

“You’re not going, Parker,” MJ says, and he stops mid-word.

No one else is really listening.

She’s not really making a scene.

But she kind of feels like she should be,

“We’re taking Thompson,” she says, hollow. “It’s Jameson’s call. Jameson feels—they feel that you can’t be trusted to—accurately represent the Jameson brand—”

“Oh,” Parker says. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he nods.

“Tell Thompson,” he says. “Tell him to watch his pace once the sun comes up. The gearbox—it’ll overheat if he takes it too fast.”

“I’m sorry,” MJ says again, and he shrugs, smiles like that’s not going to make her feel even worse.

“It’s Jameson’s call,” he says, because for all his anti-corporate talk, he knows how this goes. “What can you do?”

Jameson loses.

Thompson pushes the car too fast, and Jameson loses.

The gearbox overheats, just like they  _ knew  _ it would, and MJ watches it all happen from her hotel room in LA, and Jameson loses—

Jameson loses, and Brad is ecstatic, and Monday morning, MJ’s sitting outside Jameson’s office with a dull sense of déjà vu.

Only—it’s different, this time.

Last time, she was scared out of her mind and scrambling for a way out, and this time she

’s watching disinterestedly as one of the secretaries from two floors down hands the red folder off to Jameson’s secretary to take in to Jameson himself, and this time, MJ is  _ pissed. _

Jameson is pissed, too, of course.

“Tell me, Jones!” he thunders when they finally let her into the office. “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire everyone who ever worked on this project, starting with you!”

_ Because this was your call,  _ MJ thinks, but doesn’t dare say out loud.  _ Because you listened to Brad and forced Parker out, and now you’re too embarrassed to own up to your mistakes— _

“That red folder,” she says instead, and nods at the papers Jameson holds, the ones that break down every step of their loss. “How many people have seen it?”

Jameson blinks, momentarily thrown off his warpath.

“It’s my eyes only,” he starts to say, and MJ shakes her head.

“You sure about that?” she asks, and there’s a tiny part of her brain that’s screaming at her to be more respectful, but she’s just really,  _ really  _ not feeling it— “Because I watched it change hands five times while I was waiting out there in your office. God only knows how many people poked at it before it even made its way up to the top floor.”

Jameson hesitates.

Brad looks deeply suspicious.

“What are you trying to say, Jones?”

“You can’t win a race by  _ committee, _ ” MJ says. “You need one person in charge. One man. Who runs your company, Mr. Jameson? You? Or another committee?”

If Betty were here, she’d probably have walked out by now.

She’s not, so MJ gets to toy with the possibility of committing corporate suicide all by her lonesome.

Jameson draws himself up to his full height, and MJ doesn’t budge, looks right back at him and doesn’t blink.

_ Carrot, stick,  _ she thinks, and honestly, she doesn’t know how Brad does this all the time, it’s just exhausting—

“And there’s one other thing to consider,” she says, and Jameson narrows his eyes. “While we’re all in here, fretting over budget cuts and committee support, Beck’s sitting in a meeting just like this, and he’s not thinking about costs.”

“Oh?” Jameson asks, one bushy eyebrow crawling dangerously high. “And what do you suppose  _ Beck’s  _ thinking about?”

MJ stands up, smooths down her skirt.

“If I had to guess,” she says. “I’d say he’s thinking about how the Catalyst made 261 mph on the Mulsanne straight. Even with the committee. Even with the wrong driver. And that’s faster than anything Beck has ever seen.”

Jameson smiles, slow and cold.

“There is one man running this company, Miss Jones,” he says, a fanatic pride burning in his eyes. “And you report directly to him. Finish this. You have twelve months.”

“Thank you, sir,” MJ says, and she leaves the office before Brad even has time to panic.

It won’t last.

Realistically, it won’t last, because Brad is smart enough to get back into Jameson’s good graces again—

“But we’ve got a window,” MJ tells Ned, and he nods, looking relieved. “Let’s make the most of it while we can.”

The first step is getting Parker back.

When they dropped him from Le Mans, they dropped him from the whole program, and MJ is really starting to hate how familiar this all feels.

She finds him at the garage, tinkering away under a different car that looks like a fossil compared to what they’ve got tearing around the runway—

“You were right,” MJ says to the pair of feet sticking out from under the hood. “It was the gearbox. We ran too hot. Three out of four broke—Hill blew a rod on the other.”

Parker doesn’t say anything, and MJ grits her teeth.

“We’re going back,” she says.

The clatter of tools goes silent.

“Jameson’s given us carte blanche,” she says, and then shrugs. “It’s only temporary. As soon as Brad figures out how, they’ll be right up on our backs again.”

Still no reaction.

“Okay, Parker, seriously,” MJ says. “You want another apology? Want me to beg?”

No answer, and MJ rolls her eyes, tries her best at a wheedling, imploring tone.

“Parker, we  _ need  _ you. Parker, we can’t do this  _ without  _ you,” she says, and then drops the tone completely. “Do you have  _ any idea _ the hoops I had to crawl through just to get those four wheels on the grid? No, you don’t, because you don’t have to deal with any of it, you just have to show up, race the car, go home—”

She grabs a towel off the bench, hurls it under the car, and realizes she’s as angry as she was in Jameson’s office, before—

“Get up, clean yourself off, and let’s  _ go _ ,” she snaps. “We’ve got  _ work  _ to do.”

Parker finally slides out from under the car, and for one terrifying second, MJ’s worried she’s gone too far—

Then she realizes he’s laughing, and she almost kicks the cart out from under him.

“You’re an asshole,” she tells him.

“It was a very pretty speech.”

“Shut up. Ned’s already at the track.”

“Seriously, did you rehearse that on the flight?”

“I will kill you.”

“I’m flattered, I really am—”

“Did Ned tell you I was coming out?”

“Of course he did,” Parker says, looking way too pleased with himself. “Ned tells me everything. I already told him I’d be back.”

“Great,” MJ says. “So I’m legally allowed to kill Ned, too.”

But they’ve got their driver back.

It could be a lot worse.

They’ve got twelve months to get the car ready for Le Mans.

Objectively, it’s an impossibly fast turnaround.

Subjectively, it’s four times as much space as they had for the first car.

MJ’s almost feeling good about this.

They’re back at the runway in LA, taking the Catalyst around and around the hairpin turns, faster each time, and now they’re gearing up for Daytona, and it’s not like it’s an audition, but it really feels like it’s going to be an audition—

One night, MJ finishes up her latest round of  _ don’t-you-dare-try-and-breathe-down-my-neck-on-this  _ emails, and the sun’s just starting to rise.

It’s been a long, long day.

She turns the light out in the office, toys with the idea of getting a few hours of sleep back at the hotel, and there’s someone walking way out on the runway.

It’s Parker.

Of course it is.

By the time she joins him, he’s crouched down, poking at a crack in the asphalt near the head of one of the bends, eyeing it over carefully.

“What are you doing?” MJ asks, and he startles, turns around and relaxes a little when he sees it’s only her.

“See this?” he says, and points. “It’s my marker for turn 8.”

MJ looks. “To slow down?”

“Downshift,” he says, by way of agreement. “Touch of brakes.”

“At a hundred and fifty miles per hour,” MJ says, and he nods. “How do you see it?”

Parker scuffs his shoe along the marker, the split in the road.

“The faster you go, the more things slow down,” he says, and shrugs like he knows just how ridiculous it sounds. “Everything slows down, and you see—everything.”

He crouches down again, peers out across the tarmac, and MJ watches him.

“Do you set other markers?” she asks.

“Sure,” he says. “Sure, lots of them.”

MJ considers this.

Then she crouches down, too, hands still in her pockets, and tries to follow his gaze out across the empty runway.

“So,” she says. “So what are we looking for now?”

Parker laughs, just a little, and holds his hand out flat, like he’s trying to point his way towards something she can’t quite see.

“The perfect lap,” he says, grand and dramatic and over the top. “No mistakes. Every gear change, every corner, absolutely perfect.”

MJ looks where he’s waving. “And you can see that?”

“Sure,” Parker says again. “You can’t?”

She slants a look over at him and doesn’t say anything.

“Most people can’t,” Parker says, and he’s still got that tone in his voice that’s halfway between illusion and self-recrimination. “Most people don’t even know it’s there. But it is. It’s there.”

MJ looks down the tarmac, tries to imagine it, tries to believe that the early morning light holds the vision of one perfect moment—

Then she says, “So I’m going to get coffee, you want anything or no?”

Parker laughs out loud, and MJ pulls him back up to his feet with a grin.

The other shoe drops.

Of course it does.

Twelve months is a long time for people to start getting antsy, and at least it’s better this time, because at least she gets some sort of warning.

“Brad’s in charge,” MJ says dully, and Betty makes a frustrated noise on the other end of the phone. 

“Jameson really wants to win this,” she says, apologetic. “He’s throwing everything he’s got at the problem.”

“If he really wants to win this, maybe he shouldn’t hand the whole project over to the guy who lost him Le Mans!”

“I know,” Betty says. “MJ, I know that. But Brad’s flying out there tomorrow to tell you in person. He’s hoping you lose your cool so he has a case for taking you off the project.”

“Oh, God.” MJ stands up, moves to the office window and watches through the blinds as the Catalyst blurs past, engine roaring and tires wailing.

“Look,” Betty says. “Look, I know you and Ned and Parker—I know you’re all committed to the project. But sometimes—things are bigger than one person, you know?”

The car heads into a turn, moving blink-fast, and MJ traces its path around the bend, wonders if Parker’s got one of his markers that he missed—

He’s not slowing down.

“Brad’s not going to stop gunning for Parker,” Betty says, blunt. “As long as he’s attached to your project, Brad will do whatever he has to do to sabotage the both of you.”

Parker’s not slowing down.

Shouldn’t he be showing down?

Out on the track, the crew is starting to shout, and MJ watches, uncomprehending, as a few of them start to race out onto the tarmac, waving their arms and shouting frantically.

“I’m just saying,” Betty says. “You can’t throw away the whole project just because of one person—”

MJ drops her phone and bolts for the door just as the Catalyst explodes.

“Get him out of there!” Ned’s screaming, and there are people sprinting past her as she skids to a stop in the garage. “Get the fire extinguisher, let’s go!”

MJ would follow them out onto the runway, out towards the roiling mass of flames that used to be the Catalyst, but she can’t possibly see what good it’ll do—

“He’s out!” someone shouts. “He’s out, go, go!”

Parker is alive.

Bloodied and covered in soot, limping a little on his right leg, but he’s alive.

“Guess the roll cage doesn’t seem like such a bad idea now,” Ned says, as soon as Parker’s within hearing distance, and he grins, exhausted.

“Brakes don’t work,” he says in a rasp, and MJ almost laughs. “We’ll have to swap out the pads, they burn out after four hours.”

Le Mans is a twenty-four hour race.

Ned shakes his head.

“It’d be easier to swap out the whole brake system,” he says, and clearly doesn’t mean it, but Parker pauses, looks at MJ—

“Can we do that?” he asks, and they probably—almost definitely—cannot, but MJ realizes she’s leaning on the nearest workbench in order to stay standing and waves a hand, dismissive.

“Sure,” she says, and Parker’s answering grin nearly splits his face in two. “Yeah, sure, we can do that.”

So the Brad problem’s not going to go away on its own.

MJ thinks about what Betty said, and she knows that the other woman is right.

It would be—foolishness. To try and sacrifice this whole program just for Parker and Ned and the stupid Catalyst.

The project—it’s a career-maker.

If she plays her cards right, it could really be a big thing for her.

If she’s very, very careful—

MJ’s back at her hotel room now, but she can still feel the heat of the flames from the wreck, here the scream of the smoke hissing through the mangled metal.

If she plays her cards right—

MJ drags a hand down the side of her face, wishes she could actually sleep for once.

Betty’s right.

Of course Betty’s right.

It just makes sense to cut them loose.

_ Brad’s flying out there tomorrow to tell you in person. _

Brad doesn’t exactly do a whole lot without authorization.

There’s a chance—

Unbelievably slim, but it’s a chance—

It feels like it did way back at the start, when she was sitting in her hotel room in London and turning over plan after plan in her head, trying to think of a way out.

There’s a chance.

MJ rolls over onto her side, glares at the numbers on the cheap little digital clock, and wonders if maybe, just this once, she’ll actually be lucky.

It has to happen eventually, right?

The smoke detector on the ceiling is blinking lazily, and MJ watches it happens, wonders what would have happened if they hadn’t been able to get Parker out of the wreck in time—

It doesn’t matter.

He got out, so it doesn’t matter.

_ This time, _ MJ thinks mildly, without really meaning to.

Parker almost died for the Catalyst.

Almost died for Jameson Motor Company, for a program they had to beg him to join in the first place.

MJ flips over onto her other side, scowls into the darkness.

She should probably cut him loose—cut him and Ned loose—Betty’s right, Brad’s got the bit between his teeth now, and he’s not going to stop—

_ Parker almost died for the Catalyst,  _ she reminds herself, and the light on the smoke detector is still blinking on and off—

She can’t cut them loose.

Not like this.

They have to at least try—

Four hours later, and the smoke detector light is still blinking, and she’s got a  _ plan. _

It’s not a very good one.

It is, in fact, almost certainly going to blow up in her face and take her whole career down with it.

But it’s cool.

It’s whatever.

She’s got a plan, and so she lies flat on her back until the alarm rings one hour later.

“Parker,” MJ says the next morning, and Parker leaves off talking to Ned, falls into step beside her. “How long have you been here today?”

“Uh.” He checks his watch. “Six hours so far? Why?”

“You should go get some coffee or something.”

He squints at her, suspicious. “Why, what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” MJ lies. “You should just take a break. Go get yourself something to eat. Ned, too, he’s probably been here a while, right?”

Parker looks at her.

“Brad’s coming here, isn’t he?”

“Probably on his way as we speak.”

He claps a hand to his heart, the very picture of wounded innocence. 

“And you don’t think I can be nice to Brad for five minutes?”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” MJ says. “I will literally pay you to be gone when he shows up.”

“How exactly does that show up in the write-off?” Parker wonders, sounding thoughtful. “Like, is there a separate entry column for paying an underling not to pick a fight with a coworker?”

“Business expenses,” MJ says, and fishes around in her wallet. “Look, here is a twenty-dollar bill. Go buy yourself a coffee.”

Parker takes it, but then he stops, considers.

“I don’t know,” he says. “If I’m getting something for Ned, too, twenty dollars might not be enough—”

“Twenty bucks, Parker, take it or leave it.”

He laughs, swipes the bill from between her fingers, and tucks it into his back pocket, and MJ’s already gone back to watching the tarmac for any sign of an oncoming convoy when he pauses a second, glances between her and the Catalyst, waiting back in the garage—

“Okay,” he says. “So I know you said—I know Ned and I, we don’t ever really bother thinking about—about the business side of things. About all the hoops you have to jump through and stuff like that.”

MJ looks at him, wonders if there’s any polite way to say  _ please leave  _ and still sound supportive—

“But I trust you,” Parker says. “We trust you. To have our back. So—yeah. I know it’s probably not easy, but. Thanks.”

MJ nods, savors the moment.

“Leave before I take your allowance back,” she says, and he rolls his eyes.

“God, see what I get for trying to be sincere,” he says, but he’s grinning as she shoos him away. “I mean it! We trust you!”

He shouts the last part from a full twenty feet away, so that half the garage turns to look at them, and MJ briefly toys with the idea of flipping him off.

Instead, she shakes her head, tucks her wallet back in her bag, and goes to track down Ned.

By the time she finds him, she can already see the glitter of light off a crowd of oncoming traffic, and she knows they’re running out of time.

“Ned,” she calls, and he’s staring at the Jameson convoy, too. “Ned, how would you feel about taking a drive?”

Brad brought Jameson with him.

Probably so he can be certain in his victory, possibly so he can be sure he’ll have someone backing him up, but either way, he brought Jameson, and MJ wonders if this is what it feels like to have things actually go her way for once.

“Mr. Jameson,” she says, smiling wide. “What a surprise.”

“Sorry for the intrusion, Miss Jones,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “But when a man pays seventy-five million dollars for an automobile, he ought to at least be able to look at it.”

“Absolutely,” MJ says through her teeth. “Right this way, sir.”

Brad manages to fall into step beside her as they walk.

“MJ,” he says, quiet and sincere. “Could I get a word with you?”

“Sure, Brad,” MJ says, channeling a little bit of Ned’s  _ oh-who-me?  _ schtick. “In private?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Ned,” she calls, and Ned comes over, looking for all the world like they hadn’t planned it. “Could you take care of Mr. Jameson, please? I’ll be back in a second.”

Ned nods, unveils the Catalyst for Jameson and the other execs, and MJ ushers Brad into her office while the assembled crowd oohs and ahs at the sight it makes—

“First off,” Brad says, leaning on her desk and smiling winningly. “I just wanted to clear the air. I know we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but I hope we can just write those off as—natural combativeness. Heat of battle, and all that.”

“I  _ appreciate  _ that, Brad,” MJ says, and picks her keys up from off her desk. “I really do.”

“And now it’s my job,” he continues, with just the right amount of gravity. “My job to tell you that I’ve been appointed overall Executive Director of the racing program.”

MJ gives an appropriately surprised expression, steps around him to close one set of blinds, then the other—

“Now, MJ, I don’t want this to cause a problem between us.”

“Don’t worry, Brad,” MJ says, and heads for the door. “I can guarantee that it won’t.”

Brad’s made himself comfortable on the desk, and so she’s got about a three-second head start, and that’s just enough time for her to step backwards through the door, slam it shut, and lock Brad in the blinded-out office before he realizes what’s happening.

She sprints back to the hangar space as Brad starts to bang on the door—one of the mechanics who was watching the whole display revs one of the burner cars loud enough to cover the noise with an almost fiendish grin—

“Tell me, Jameson,” Ned’s saying as she slows to a walk, mingles with the rest of the crowd. “You want to see what your money really bought?”

Jameson smiles, uncertain.

“What do you mean, Mr. Leeds?”

“We could take her for a spin” Ned offers, and smiles like he can’t hear the distant noise of Brad completely losing his mind in the office. “What do you say?”

Later, she learns that Jameson actually cried.

Ned peels out of the hangar with a squeal of tires just as Brad finally breaks out of the office and comes charging up to the starting line—

Ned hasn’t driven in years, and she saw him popping his pills like they were candy, right before they loaded Jameson into the Catalyst—

But the Catalyst screams out of the hangar, takes the first turn at 100 mph, and rockets along the straightaway before veering into a 200 mph slalom between a row of oil drums—

MJ watches, heart in her throat, as the car slams to a stop—the brakes kick in, no problem, and she has just enough time to be grateful for that—

When Ned and Jameson emerge from the car, the older man is still suspiciously misty-eyed, and MJ helps him climb the rest of the way out of the passenger’s seat.

“I had no idea,” he says, quieter than she’s ever heard him in her life. “I had no idea—God, but I wish my father could have seen what his cars could be.”

He gets it.

For the first time, MJ thinks that he might finally get it.

“Sir,” she says, and a few of the techs are running interference, keeping Brad from storming up to them in a rage. “This isn’t a machine anyone can just—jump in and control.”

“Absolutely not,” he says, and she knows that he understands.

“I’m not asking you to trust us,” she says, because they’ve done this song and dance routine twice now, and she’s sick of it. “I’m asking you for a chance. Give us Daytona. Give us a chance to show what we can do. If Parker wins, then we go to Le Mans.”

Jameson eyes her over, and apparently his newfound love of the craft of racing isn’t  _ quite  _ enough to outweigh his instincts.

“And if he loses?”

“Leeds American,” Ned says, and MJ whips her head around to stare at him. “Full ownership, free of charge. Forever.”

“Ned,” MJ says, and Jameson says, “You have a lot of faith in your friends, Mr. Leeds.”

“Do we have a deal?” Ned presses, and Jameson grins.

Parker returns just as Brad is helping Jameson back into his own car, and he passes MJ a flat white, hands Ned an iced coffee.

“Well?” he says, voice working way too hard to be casual. “What did Mr. Jameson have to say?”

MJ looks at Ned, and the other man shakes his head, almost too quickly to be seen.

“He said—” MJ looks away, flashes a practiced smile in Parker’s direction. “He said to wish you luck at Daytona.”

Parker looks between the two of them, clearly suspicious, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I guess you’d better pack your bags, Parker,” MJ says, and pats him on the shoulder before she goes to check out the damages to her office. “Looks like we’re all going to Florida.”

They’re not the only Jameson team at Daytona.

Just like the fiasco at Le Mans, there are multiple Jameson cars on the track, and MJ would have to be an idiot not to recognize this for the grudge match that it is.

Parker’s driving the lead Catalyst, and that’s still technically under MJ’s supervision— _ technically _ —and Eugene “Flash” Thompson is driving for Brad’s team, and of course nobody freaking  _ tells her anything about it  _ until she shows up at the track the day before and sees Brad already in the press box.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Ned hisses, and MJ shrugs.

“Same thing we are,” she says. “Waiting to see who’s got the better driver.”

One of the reporters shouts a question, and Brad waves a hand to quiet them down.

“The thing to remember,” he says, magnanimous. “Is that we’ve actually got multiple teams out on the track today. Mr. Parker may be driving the lead car, but we’re eager to see how  _ all  _ of our racers fare—one of the teams is under my direct supervision, you know—”

“God help us,” MJ mutters. “If he told the story, he’d be the founder of Jameson. Where’s Parker?”

“Down in the pit,” Ned says. “Getting ready. Are you going to come down to watch?”

She wants to.

She really wants to.

But when one of the reporters spot her and Ned, there’s a general shout of excitement, and then they’re being swarmed by questions, lights flashing and microphones waving wildly—

“Get Parker ready to go,” MJ orders, because Ned’s starting to look a little overwhelmed. “I’ll take care of the reporters, just make sure we’re ready to race—”

Ned takes the out and bails, and MJ smiles politely, answers question after question about the Catalyst program and what they think their odds are, and how they think Parker will be able to handle the track, and are they at all worried about a repeat of the incident with the Olympian—

“Of course, there are always concerns with a new program,” MJ says, and her teeth are starting to hurt from smiling. “But we have no reason to doubt that Mr. Parker will perform admirably. He knows the Catalyst better than  _ any  _ of the other racers out on that track—”

Brad’s smile goes a little fixed at that, and MJ finds her own smile quickly becoming more natural in response.

“It’s like Mr. Davis said,” she says, even though he definitely didn’t say anything, and she flashes another humorless smile at the eagerly listening crowd. “Today is all about the Catalyst. We’re just excited for the opportunity to show the world what we can do.”

Brad glares, and there are a thousand other questions being shouted at her at once, and MJ smiles and nods and gives trite, patented responses that soothe everyone’s doubts, and she definitely doesn’t wait or look away or listen for the roar of the Catalyst engine as the racers start to assemble somewhere far below.

When the flag drops, MJ makes her escape.

No matter what happens now, there’s not much she can do to smooth over the events.

Either they’ll win, or they won’t.

If they win, Brad’s the one who’ll have to call it in to Jameson, so there’s not much she can do there, either, and he  _ probably  _ won’t straight-up lie, not when Jameson can easily find the results for himself.

So she pushes her way out of the press box, heads down to where Ned is pacing back and forth behind the pit crew, takes off her jacket and leaves it on one of the benches—

“How’s it going?”

She has to shout to be heard over the noise of the track, and Ned cups a hand around his ear, so she repeats herself a few more times, just to be certain.

“We’re following the plan!” Ned bellows back, and MJ nods.

Right.

The plan.

Jameson Analytics passed them a Plan, a breakdown of where to push the Catalyst, how fast they can push the Catalyst, and for the love of God, whatever they do, they absolutely cannot try to push the Catalyst here, here, and here—

Brad got the same plan.

They’re just one big, happy family.

The cars blur past on another lap, and MJ just catches a glimpse of Parker’s blue and red Catalyst, followed closely by Thompson—

“What is Thompson doing?” she yells, and Ned shrugs, helpless.

“He’s pushing it too fast! Trying to push Parker even further!”

They’ve got signs for this—Parker showed her, before the race—signs to tell the cars to ease up, back off the engine and give it a chance to breathe—

“Should we put the signs up?” she asks.

“Do you think Thompson would listen?”

Almost certainly not.

No, if she’s reading it right—and she’s pretty sure she is, because  _ come on _ —if she’s reading this right, then Brad’s probably passed down his own plan, without the involvement of Jameson Analytics—

Brad doesn’t need to win.

He just needs Parker to lose.

Twenty-four hours is a long time to try and maintain a lead—

Out on the track, Thompson’s still tailing Parker, way too close, and they can’t keep this going for the rest of the race, this is ridiculous—

They’re coming up on an cherry-red SI Mirage, moving way too fast, way too fast—

Parker brakes in time.

Thompson doesn’t.

Thompson brakes too hard, fishtails wildly at 140 miles per hour, and then—

He clips the Mirage, and it skids out of control, flying off the track, straight towards one of the pylons—

The Mirage catches fire with the roar of flame, and Parker tears right through the smoke, Thompson revving the engine wildly to try and catch up—

“Jesus,” Ned says, seething. “Jesus—did you see that?”

She saw it.

The driver will be fine.

There’s nothing for it now—

“We’re still in this,” she reminds him, and tears her gaze from the burning Mirage’s remains. “We’re still in it.”

“I can push it farther.”

It’s the first thing out of Parker’s mouth when Carter swaps in for the second leg of the race, and MJ passes him a bottle of water, which he takes gratefully.

“How about the Mirage that Thompson swiped?” he asks next. “Any word on the driver?”

“No word,” MJ says. “How are the brakes?”

“They’re working,” he says. “For now. Ask me again in eight hours. Did you know Jameson was going to put Thompson on the field?”

“Not until we got here. What do you mean, you can push it?”

“Ned showed me the Plan,” he says, distracted and probably exhausted, but his eyes keep drifting back to the track as the racers make their first lap. “Jameson wants us to hold the Catalyst steady at 7,000 RPM.”

“And you think we can go harder?”

“I know we can. We’ve done it before. But Jameson’s got the  _ plan _ —”

A roar from the crowd scatters MJ’s attention, and she looks up in time to see an all-too-familiar Catalyst blurring past, pulling ahead of its closest tracker—

Brad’s team is in first place now.

MJ looks up at the press box, and she can see Brad shaking hands, clapping people on the back—

“Get some rest,” she tells Parker, and steers him towards the makeshift cot that they’ve set up in the back of the pit. “You’ve got four hours to rest.”

Carter is pushing the Catalyst as hard as he can, but Thompson’s Catalyst peeled out of the pit long before Carter could, Hill safely behind the wheel, and MJ grits her teeth, skirts around the activity of their own crew, mind working, trying to think of a way around this—

When she finds Ned, he’s staring at the pit crew right next to theirs, looking somewhere between frustrated and impressed.

“How in the hell are they pitting so fast?” he demands, and MJ smiles wearily.

“Brad got them a NASCAR pit crew,” she says.

“Are you kidding?”

“Afraid not.”

“God, of course he did.”

“Parker says he can push the Catalyst past 7,000.”

Ned glances sideways over at her. “He would.”

MJ nods, doesn’t look at him. “Is that true?”

The cars streak past again, Thompson still in the lead, and the blue and red Catalyst flanking him is starting to fade—

“What about the plan?” Ned asks.

“I’m still working on that,” MJ admits. “Is it true?”

“I—don’t know,” Ned says. “I think so. But we don’t know, we can only guess—"

They can only guess.

And if they deviate from the plan—if they put anything in writing that Brad can seize upon—if they deviate from the plan and they still  _ lose _ , after all of that—

_ We’re already losing. _

_ It’s not like it’ll get much worse. _

“Better than what Thompson’s got, anyhow.” MJ looks up at the press box once more, thinks it over. “Come and get me once Parker starts his next leg.”

Thompson’s still in the lead.

Thompson’s still in the lead, and MJ’s back down in the pit again, chewing hard on the inside of her cheek—

“We’re locked out,” Ned says. “Nothing Parker can do. This late in the race, running hot, we’ve got to keep the engine under six thousand.”

Brad is exultant.

He’s won, he knows he’s won, and if this is the way it goes—

There’s a lot more riding on this than Brad’s petty grudge, MJ thinks desperately, because there’s Ned to consider, too, and his whole company, because he somehow thought it was a good idea to make a bet against one of the biggest car manufacturers in the country—in the world—

She paces to the wall of the pit, paces back, wishes uselessly for something to do.

There has to be a way out.

There has to be  _ something. _

“If he pushes it past 7,000,” she asks Ned, and he looks up sharply. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The car falls apart,” Ned says. “That’s the worst that could happen.”

_ Still in the lead,  _ the announcer says over the PA.  _ Jameson Motor Company, Thompson and Hill at the wheel— _

They still have the warning signs, the signs to signal the drivers to slow down.

They could do it, she knows.

She could give Ned the go-ahead to put up the signs, stick to the plan, and then maybe she could talk her way into claiming any Jameson win as a success—

There’s a plan.

Brad will always, always follow the  _ plan— _

MJ grabs the nearest sign, flips it over and digs a pen out of her bag—

“MJ,” Ned says as she writes. “MJ, what are you doing?”

“The field,” she says. “How do I get out onto the field?”

“You’d have to signal the marshal—”

“Do it.”

“Are you sure—”

“ _ Do it.” _

As soon as she gets the okay, she kicks off her shoes, hops over the wall, and waits, leaning against the concrete barrier that won’t do a damn thing to protect her if one of the cars starts to spin out—

The cars are blurring up the track towards her, and Parker’s fighting to pass the cars around him, but he’s slowing the Catalyst, he’s following the plan, because he promised he would, they all promised that they’d stick to the plan—

MJ takes a deep breath, holds the sign above her head—

The roar of the cars as they blur past is enough to rattle all her teeth in her skull, and she almost drops the sign, plants her feet and holds it up higher, and there’s the blue and red car, there it is, coming up fast, far too fast to actually read what she’s written—

_ 7,000+,  _ the sign reads, and then, as large as she could write it— _ GO LIKE HELL.  _

Parker blurs past, and for a second, MJ thinks she can almost hear him laugh as he drops a gear and the Catalyst surges forward.

Back up in the press room, Brad is seething.

“You agreed,” he hisses at MJ, once the reporters are distracted, dialed in on the action on the track below. “Jameson set the course, and you  _ agreed _ —"

MJ’s not really listening.

Down on the track, Parker’s swerving between cars, sliding easily past one racer—then another—

The Catalyst holds steady, slipping further and further forward—

Hunting, MJ realizes.

Hunting the Catalyst up ahead.

The white flag flashes, and every eye in the press box is glued to the track.

“This isn’t what we discussed,” Brad says, sounding almost desperate.

“We didn’t discuss Thompson pushing Parker like that, either,” MJ says, conversational. “But look where that got us.”

“MJ, I swear, are you really willing to throw away your career—”

“Thompson’s going to crack.”

MJ doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but she’s watching the two Catalysts fight their way around the track, shoving and lurching and jockeying for position, and she suddenly just  _ knows _ —

She sees it happen like it’s in slow motion—Parker slipstreams, slides past Thompson on the high side, and Brad goes pale—

The Catalyst engine roars, and MJ feels it all the way up in the box as Parker tears free of the crowded bank, swerves past one more car, blink-fast and surging all the way—

The checkered flag flashes, and the crowd goes wild as Parker’s Catalyst scorches across the finish line, screams to a stop—

Thompson takes third.

Thompson takes third, and the press box dissolves into chaos.

“Mr. Davis!” one of the reporters shouts. “Mr. Davis, any comment on the Jameson victory?”

It nearly kills him to say it, MJ can tell.

But she watches him swallow back his rage, plaster a blinding smile across his face, and beam around at the assembled reporters.

“We’re really proud of both our teams!” he insists, and MJ wonders if he’d burst a blood vessel if she pointed out that one of their teams barely even placed. “This is a great moment for the Jameson racing division, we’re really pleased with how the program has advanced—”

MJ watches him make nice with the different agencies, and she should probably be the bigger person and let him take the credit for this moment.

She’s not  _ that  _ nice a person, though.

She goes over to where he’s left his jacket, roots around in the pockets until she finds his phone, and then pushes through the crowd of reporters, beams at them like she’s just as thrilled as he is—

“Here, Brad,” she says, and forces the phone into his remarkably uncooperative hand. “Aren’t you going to call Mr. Jameson and give him the good news?”

Brad looks like he’d rather swallow broken glass, but it’s not like he can exactly say  _ no,  _ so he punches in the number, dials—

The reporters eat it up.

MJ floats on a cloud of borrowed victory and vindictive delight all the way back down to the pit.

“We won,” Ned says, still sounding stunned, and it’s distinctly possible that he might be ever so slightly drunk. “We really won.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” MJ says, and Parker says, “What, did you think we wouldn’t?”

They’re sitting around a table in some touristy little beachfront restaurant, and Parker looks like he’s about ten seconds from collapsing face-first into his untouched plate of food.

“Honestly,” Ned says. “Honestly, there were a few moments there where I wasn’t entirely certain.”

“That’s fair,” Parker allows, and MJ says. “Yeah, well, me too.”

“Was Brad furious?” Ned asks, brightening suddenly. “I bet Brad was furious.”

“He was—not in the best mood I’ve ever seen,” MJ allows, and Ned looks delighted.

Parker should probably get some sleep.

Carter begged off early on account of not planning to move for the next twenty-four hours until their plane takes off—

Parker’s still here, though, and MJ thinks she should probably pretend to be responsible for her team and tell him to go get some rest.

Instead, she says, “They’ll be ready for us, next time.”

“Who?” Ned blinks. “Who, Thompson?”

“They’ll know we’re willing to shirk Jameson’s strategy,” MJ points out. “They’ll know that the Catalyst can go even faster if we push it.”

Parker hums a little, conceding the point.

“Thompson was breaking the strategy, too,” he says. “I don’t remember seeing the part in the script where he was supposed to drag off of me for the first four hours straight.”

It’s a fair point, she guesses.

“Still,” she says. “Still, we’ll have to be ready.”

“We will be,” Parker says, and Ned groans.

“One night,” he complains. “Can’t we just have one night to be excited? We just won one of the toughest races in the  _ world _ , can’t we just have one night to really—you know, really savor that?”

MJ laughs in spite of herself.

“Fair,” she says. “Alright, fine, that’s fair. You all get one night to be excited.”

“Thank you,” Ned says gravely, and clinks the edge of his drink against hers. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

They’re the last ones in the restaurant by the time they leave, and MJ leaves an extra-large tip to make up for it, which is extremely easy to do when Jameson Motor Company is footing the bill.

And then they’re picking their way back to the hotel in the dim glow from the streetlamps, and Ned is definitely more than a little tipsy, and Parker is more than a little bit punch-drunk, and the combined effect is that MJ is starting to feel remarkably like the designated driver, which is a first for her—

“We won,” Ned says one more time, right before she leaves them in the hotel lobby.

“We won,” she agrees, and Parker grins at her tone, but sobers up quickly—

“Now what?” he asks, and MJ catches the shift in his mood.

_ We won. _

_ Now what? _

“Now,” she says, and the weight of it hits her all at once. “Now we go to France.”

MJ’s sitting in her LA office, studying the map of Le Mans for the billionth time.

She knows what it looks like by now.

But it still doesn’t hurt to look one more time—

“When I was a kid,” Parker says, and she looks up to see him standing in the doorway, looking kind of sheepish. “I used to draw out the racetrack by hand. So I could follow the racers on the screen.”

MJ can just picture it.

“Then you must be an old pro at this,” she says, and waves at the chair opposite her desk. “Maybe you’d better walk me through it.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Right, because you’re just a total amateur,” he says, but he takes the chair anyhow, studies the map like he’s never seen it before. “I mean, you start at the start line, I guess.”

He traces the starting point, and MJ follows the motion, lets herself try and picture the route in her head, the photographs she’s seen—

“So you accelerate straight away,” Parker says. “Go hard up to Dunlop bridge—”

“Try not to hit anyone in the initial scrum,” MJ puts in.

“Right, that, too. Then you’ve got a tricky bend, uphill camber of the road away from you, then down through the trees to the Esses—braking, second gear.”

He adds the last part like an afterthought, and MJ thinks of the crack in the asphalt outside, the markers that have to be seen and recognized at well over two hundred miles an hour.

“Accelerate up to Terte Rouge, and you’ve got the critical first gear corner, fast entry.” Parker follows this line, too. “Keep speed for your exit onto Mulsanne, long straightaway, hemmed in by poplar on either side—top gear, 250 mph, and then you can relax.”

The track bends up ahead, and MJ wonders how anyone could possibly relax at 250 miles an hour—

“Then bend down to third, but keep the revs up, try to get a maximum exit—there’s a brow there, can’t be helped, you’ve got to jump, but don’t damage the car—”

On and on it goes, until Parker’s traced the track all the way back to the beginning.

“Past the pits, through the grandstand,” he says. “Over the line. The first three and a half minutes out of twenty-four hours.”

_ A perfect lap. _

“You can’t make every lap perfect,” MJ says, and Parker’s still studying the map.

“No,” he allows. “But you try.”

MJ hums, thinks it over.

For a while, neither of them speaks, and the silence in the small office is complete.

Then MJ says, “Actually, the race starts there. You have to run to your car at Le Mans.”

Parker huffs out a laugh.

“Right, okay, so first I manage to hobble across the space to the car—”

“Don’t get cute,” MJ says, trying not to smile. “I’m just saying, the race starts before the starting line.”

They arrive in France at almost three in the morning, and part of MJ thinks that they should settle in, see some of the sights, but part of her is thinking they should just head straight to the hotel, crash for the night, and deal with everything else in the morning.

That ends up being the part that wins, and so that ends up being the plan.

When they reach the hotel, there are a few people milling about with the same air of jet-lagged exhaustion, and MJ forces herself to make polite small talk with some of the buyers she recognizes from last year— _ last year _ —while they’re waiting to check in—

Flash Thompson is there, too.

He spots Parker right away, and MJ feels her proverbial hackles rise, tries to figure out how she’s going to diffuse an international incident right there in the lobby.

But Thompson just sort of nods at them, looking as drained as the rest of them feel, and so that’s one crisis postponed, she guesses.

On the other hand—

There’s a brief murmur of excitement from the hotel doors, and MJ turns in time to see a man she recognizes at once, despite the jet lag, despite the fatigue—

Quentin Beck pushes his way through the crowd, and the other man, following close behind him—

“Steve Gutenberg,” Parker says beside her, watching the racer without ever seeming to lift his gaze from the race schedule in his hands. “Beck’s favorite driver.”

Steve Gutenberg.

Four times racing at Le Mans.

Four times winning.

Beck and Gutenberg shove their way past Ned and Parker and MJ, and Gutenberg goes out of his way to jostle Parker as they pass, turns and flashes a sharp-edged smile over his shoulder.

“God,” Parker says mildly. “How do these people even have the  _ energy  _ for this kind of thing?”

It’s a fair question, MJ thinks, and they watch in silence as Beck pushes his way to the front of the line, spits a few lines in rapid-fire French that her sleep-deprived mind struggles to translate.

The concierge waves for someone to take the pair up to their rooms, and MJ watches them go.

It’s funny, she guesses, but she’d really almost forgotten.

With all of the politicking, fighting to stay ahead of Brad and Jameson and everybody else at JMC, she’d almost forgotten the real reason why they’ve come to Le Mans in the first place.

Beck glances back in their direction, the corner of his mouth curling in what could be a smile and what could be a sneer—

_ That’s why we came,  _ MJ reminds herself, and Ned and Parker have gone so still and silent beside her that she knows they must feel it, too.

Parker watches Gutenberg until he disappears, and he doesn’t say a word, so neither does she, and the line inches slowly forward, one tired guest at a time.

_ That’s why we’re here. _

There are twenty-seven hours to the start of the race.

The night before the race, it rains.

MJ’s spent all day talking to reporters, talking to the mechanic team, poring over the Le Mans rulebook for anything that might set them back, anything that might throw a spanner into the works, so to speak.

It’s foolish, of course.

That’s what  _ unexpected  _ means, she won’t be able to prepare for it, by definition.

Still.

It can’t hurt to be ready.

But it rains, sometime after sundown, and MJ closes her laptop, rubs her eyes and thinks about buying an umbrella.

By the time she makes it out of the hotel, the rain has stopped.

The rain has stopped, and so she wanders without any real idea of where she’s going, what she’s looking for—

It still doesn’t come as much of a surprise when she looks up and realizes that she’s wandered her way to the Le Mans grandstand.

There’s no one here but maintenance, and MJ picks her way down to the track, looks up at the leaderboard, down towards the Dunlop bridge, and then further, further down the course.

A footstep behind her makes her turn, and it’s not much of a surprise to see Parker there, either, hands in his pockets and hair wet like he’s been out in the rain for hours.

“What do you think?” he asks, quiet and conversational. “Will it rain again tomorrow?”

MJ’s read the weather reports for the last ten years and counting—

“It always rains here,” she says. “But it’ll be dry at the start. When the rain comes, we’ll have to change out the tires.”

“Right,” Parker says. “Right.”

He looks past her, out to where the track bends and vanishes in the darkness, and MJ follows his gaze, tries to see the track the way it’ll look tomorrow, full of sound and fury, etcetera.

“You might want to think about getting some sleep,” she suggests, and Parker shoots her a look that says his head’s in the same place as hers is, and there’s no way either of them are going to be able unwind long enough to sleep.

“You too,” he says, and she scoffs.

“I won’t be the one driving,” she points out, and he tips his head, concedes the point.

“Fair enough,” he says. “Right, fair enough.”

He waits a moment longer, and MJ wishes she had some great bit of advice, something that would make the perfect segue into the breakneck pace of tomorrow.

She can’t think of anything.

So instead, she looks off down the track one more time, listens to the quiet hum of some distant machinery, breathes in the cold damp of the late night air.

“I’m serious,” she tells him. “Get some sleep.”

“Bossy,” he says, and steps back to let her pass. “Goodnight, Miss Jones.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Parker.”

She leaves him standing on the empty track, makes her way back to her hotel room and reads and rereads the rule book until her eyes are too heavy to read any more.

Sixteen racers sit in their fireproof suits, and Brad paces back and forth in front of them while MJ leans against the doorway and watches.

“Why are you here?” Brad asks, voice heavy with the solemnity of the moment. “Why are any of us here?”

He pauses, like he’s waiting for an answer, and MJ looks around until she sees one of his team members filming the speech, and that makes a little more sense, at least.

“We’re here,” he says, when none of the drivers dare respond, “to put red paint in the rearview mirror, gentlemen. Rivalry between crews. Between drivers. That’s all behind us now.”

_ Easy for you to say,  _ MJ thinks mildly.  _ You’ve been the one stoking most of it. _

“Obey your pit signals,” Brad continues. “Follow team rules. Keep below 6,200 RPM at all times.”

Parker apparently can’t help himself.

He glances over his shoulder, just long enough to catch her eye with a deeply amused expression, and then he faces forward once again.

“Scott,” Brad says, and one of the drivers MJ doesn’t know very well snaps to attention. “You’re on point. Keep to your assigned starting lap time of 3.24.”

Oh, God, he’s going to spell it all out for them?   
MJ fights the urge to check her watch.

The drivers have been briefed. 

They know what they have to do.

“Thompson, you’re two seconds behind him,” Brad says, and then his gaze slides to Parker with an air of extreme reluctance. “McCormick, two seconds behind that, and Parker, two seconds behind that.”

What a shock.

If Brad has his way, Parker won't even place.

“Stick to this plan,” Brad insists. “And we can  _ break  _ Beck Automotive.”

In spite of herself, MJ can’t help but thrill at the idea.

This is what they’ve been working for.

This is what it all leads to.

“We have the best car,” Brad says, like he’s had anything at all to do with it. “We have the best team. Now show me that you men are the best drivers.”

Parker leans over and whispers something to Thompson that makes the other man snort out a poorly-disguised laugh, and Brad's eyes narrow suspiciously, but Parker’s gotten pretty good at schooling his features into a blankly innocent expression.

The meeting is adjourned not long after, and Ned and Parker and MJ make their way down to the pits just in time to see—

Three Beck Misteros are wheeled past, light glittering off their fenders, three gleaming steel monsters, polished and beautiful and terrible to look at.

Gutenberg walks at the helm of the three cars, and he looks Parker over as he passes, gives him one last sneering smile.

“Well,” Parker says. “If this were a beauty pageant, I think we’d have just lost.”

Up in the press box, Beck takes his seat, staring down towards the Jameson pit, and he smiles, too.

“Yeah, well,” Ned says. “Looks aren’t everything. So I’ve been told.”

“You can take them,” MJ says.

Four minutes to the first flag.

Parker falls into line with the other racers.

They take their position, line up across from their cars, and MJ watches from the press box as Parker looks up the line, down the other way, taking the measure of all the other drivers.

She suspects that it’s largely for show.

Every driver on the track knows more about the other drivers than she did about her last two boyfriends.

But it’s all about this final moment.

This is where the race truly begins.

The Dutray clock ticks off one minute, and then another, face shining weirdly in the early morning light.

The marshal steps forward, flag held high, and the crowd that presses in close all around them seems to hold its breath like one great living thing.

Parker turns to look back towards his Catalyst, but MJ’s eyes are glued to the flag.

The second hand ticks around past the thirty.

45.

50.

58.

59—

The marshal drops the flag.

And the crowd begins to scream.

Parker sprints to his car, jumps into the cockpit, and the engine roars to life in a heartbeat, an arrogant growl that seems to shake the entire track—

He’s fighting with his door, struggling with the latch, but then he slams it closed, peels out off the grid—

A collision—right in front of him, two cars crash into each other with the shriek of tearing metal, and Parker swerves wildly to try and get clear of it—

The three Misteros weave around the wreckage, pull clear of the pack almost immediately, and Parker’s flying around the cars that remain, chasing down the Misteros far out in the lead—

The Dunlop bridge— _ go hard up to the Dunlop bridge _ —

MJ watches, breathless, as the Catalyst surges to the front of the pack, fighting for every last inch and snarling all the way, charging past one car, then another—

Just ahead, two other cars are jockeying for position, and they touch for just a second, just the smallest fraction of a second—

The Catalyst breaks for the outside, swerving hard to avoid them, while another racer breaks for the inside—

The other car’s tire brushes against the curb and blows on impact.

The car careens across the track—off the track—collides with a low stone wall and goes flailing and spinning across the ground, spitting dirt up into the air in a helpless, frustrated, rage—

Thompson’s Catalyst is gaining ground, weaving around the new obstacle, pulling hard for the three Misteros, but it’s not fast enough, not nearly, not yet—

“Where’s Parker?” MJ mutters out loud, and she can feel Brad’s eyes on the side of her head, but she doesn’t trust herself to look.

One, two, three—the three Misteros blur past in rapid succession, and MJ’s only barely listening to the announcer as he calls it for Beck in first, second, and third, shoving her way to the back of the box, heading for the pit—

The first lap is already over.

Something’s wrong with Parker’s door.

He swings into the pit after the first lap, just as MJ pushes to the front of the bustling crowd of mechanics who race back and forth—

“It won’t close!” he snaps, breathless and furious, and Ned tries to slam the door shut, only to have it bounce open again—

“Ned, what the  _ hell  _ are we _ doing _ down here?” MJ demands, because this can’t be happening, this can’t be the thing that costs them the race—

“It’s come unfixed!” one of the mechanics yelps, fighting hard to try and force it back into place—

“Move!” Ned shouts, and grabs a hammer off the nearest workbench. “Parker, get back—”

He slams the door shut, smashes the hammer once, twice, off the Catalyst frame until it warps, locking the door shut—

“Go!” he bellows over the roar of the engine. “Go, go, go—”

This time, when the Catalyst screams out of the pit, the door stays closed, and Parker floors it, fighting hard to make up for lost time, weaving through the slower cars and shrieking towards the glittering red Misteros, so far up ahead.

“We’re behind,” Ned says, face pale and grim. “We’ve fallen back of Gutenberg—”

“Thompson’s making a move,” MJ says, and that’ll be enough to shake the Beck driver, surely—they just need to buy time for Parker to get back in the race—

Sure enough, Thompson’s edging up towards the smaller Misteros, pushing the Catalyst faster, faster—

They’re coming up on the straightaway now, and MJ’s back in Jameson’s office, thinking of the way she’d bartered for her job, almost a year ago now—

_ 261 on the Mulsanne straight—faster than anything he’s ever seen— _

It was true then.

It’s even truer now.

The Mistero engines whine as Gutenberg fights to keep the lead, pushing the cars one desperate inch ahead, and then another—

It doesn’t matter.

It was never going to matter

The Misteros can’t compete on the straightaway.

Thompson passes the three Misteros in a blazing fit of speed, and an animal roar goes up from the crowd.

For the first time in nearly seven years, Beck Automotive has lost the easy lead at Le Mans.

It should feel like a victory.

But MJ looks at Ned, who’s still gripping the hammer tight in both hands, and she doesn’t look up towards the press box, doesn’t trust herself to keep calm at the triumph she knows she’ll find scrawled across Brad’s face.

Beck has lost the lead.

For the first time, Jameson has a chance at winning the race.

Parker is nowhere to be seen.

The rest of the pack blurs by, almost too fast to be seen, but MJ catches a glimpse of the familiar red and blue Catalyst, sliding into each new opening that the charging mass of vehicles provides.

They streak past, another blinding lap, and MJ’s lost count of the number by now.

Another lap, and that’s when Parker begins to make his move.

When the Catalyst scorches through another lap, the crowd goes wild.

3.14.

3.14, and the roar from the crowd is almost enough to drown out the scream of the engines.

3.14, and the announcer is losing his entire mind, shouting into the loudspeaker to make himself heard over the chaos.

“—a track record!” he’s shouting, and MJ can’t fully wrap her head around the numbers she’s seeing on the leaderboard. “Peter Parker in the number 7 Jameson has broken the record—three minutes and fourteen seconds—”

It’s fast.

It’s really, really fast.

The pit phone is ringing wildly, and MJ shakes herself back into the present with a jolt, scrambles to snatch it off its hook and covers her other ear with her hand—

“MJ, what the hell is he doing?” Brad demands, and she looks up to see him staring down into the pit, furious, the box phone jammed into the crook between his shoulder and his ear. “This is not the plan, and you know it—”

“Plans change!” MJ shouts back, and she sees him open his mouth to respond, so she waves a hand to cut him off. “He’s just getting back into position, Brad—let him get his slot back, and he’ll slow down to pace—”

Brad doesn’t look convinced, but MJ hangs up before he can say anything else, turns back to the track as another pack of cars tear past.

It’s an impossibly fast pace, an impossibly fast record—

And Parker breaks it again within the hour.

“Three minutes and twelve seconds!”

The announcer sounds as stunned as she feels, like he can’t make himself believe the numbers on the leaderboard, either.

“Three minutes and twelve seconds—another track record, a  _ blistering  _ speed—"

Ned sucks in a quick breath, and MJ glances over at him, grins.

“New track record,” she says. “Not bad.”

Ned looks back at her for a second, and then he grins too, like he can’t help but do anything else.

“New  _ personal  _ record,” he says, and MJ understands.

_ New personal record. _

“Oh,” she says, and wants to laugh out loud, but doesn’t dare.  _ “Oh.” _

“Yeah,  _ oh, _ ” Ned says, and he does laugh, and MJ claps him on the shoulder, pushes past him until she’s standing right at the pit wall.

Another blindingly fast lap, and she doesn’t even bother looking at the leaderboard this time.

It’ll only be a waste of time.

Three hours now—three hours down, and she doesn’t even know how many are laps they’ve covered, how many laps are still remaining.

They’re three hours in.

So that just leaves twenty-one hours left to go.

MJ glances up at the clock that looms large over the racetrack, and she feels a momentary pang of doubt, despite her best efforts.

Twenty-one hours is an  _ awfully  _ long time to drive the same track.

_ New personal record,  _ she thinks, and forces the doubts to the back of her mind until they’re utterly silent.

When Parker hands the Catalyst off to Carter, he can barely stand.

He’s leaning on Ned as he slides out of the car, but he pulls himself upright to tap the side of Carter’s helmet, wish him good luck before he lurches his way back towards the makeshift cot.

MJ’s got the lap charts printed out from the analysts upstairs, and Parker latches onto them with a desperate sort of eagerness, scans the printouts over and over again.

“Six seconds faster than Thompson,” MJ says, and he looks between her and the charts, uncomprehending. “If we hadn’t blown the start, you’d be in the lead by now. Think you can keep this up?”

“No idea,” Parker says, eyes red-rimmed and blown wide. “I have no idea.”

But he’s still staring at the printouts like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, and MJ can feel it, the terrified thrill of hope that’s just beginning to burn the air around them.

A plume of black smoke rises high in the late afternoon sky, and MJ leaves Parker on the cot, joins Ned over at the pit wall.

In the pit next to theirs, the Beck mechanics are craning their necks to see, too, and the crowd is murmuring, waiting for an explanation.

“There’s been an accident,” the announcer says, voice cool and professional as always. “Entries no. 55 and 41 have collided on the track—”

_ It doesn’t matter,  _ MJ thinks, and has just enough time to be ashamed of herself for thinking it—

Another horrible crash tears through the hush of the crowd, and then another—

What happens is this—the second Beck driver takes the turn too fast, whips around the bend just in time to watch 55 and 41 crash in front of him.

He has no choice but to swerve, smashes off a sand bank, and is immediately sent spinning by another car, hot on his heels.

He’s lucky to be alive.

But he’s out of the race.

“No. 20,” the announcer says. “No. 20, Michael Rook, has left the track. All three drivers are alive.”

That’s good.

It’s good that they’re alive, of course.

But MJ meets Ned’s gaze, doesn’t have to turn around to know that Parker’s looking their way, too, and they’re all thinking the same thing.

_ One down. _

_ One down, just two more to go. _

If one of the Beck drivers has just been—removed—

And again, MJ’s glad he’s alright and everything.

But that’s one less driver between Jameson and a total victory.

One less driver between Parker and a total victory.

_ If it weren’t for the blowup at the beginning— _

They’re still in this race.

Carter’s giving more ground than he probably should, and Parker may have to fight to get those extra seconds back.

But that’s one less driver in the way.

They’ve still got a chance, and God forgive her and all that jazz, MJ thinks, but their chances have just gotten that much better.

They’re still in the race.

It’s started to rain by the time Carter ends his leg.

MJ takes the rain jacket that one of the mechanics hands her, pulls the hood up over her head, and squints up through the driving rain at the leaderboard, tries to blink the water out of her eyes.

It’s getting harder to see.

Parker tears out of the pit, windshield wipers waving furiously, and there’s oil on the track, MJ knows, from the collisions and from the cars themselves—

There’s nothing she can do.

She’s only here to watch.

MJ wicks some of the water off her face, frowns up at the leaderboard and wonders how on earth anyone sees through this.

“I need a stopwatch,” she says to no one in particular, and then shakes her head, goes to find one.

On the other side of the wall, the Beck team is prepping for the next pit stop, and MJ watches them as they ignore her resolutely, bustling back and forth between the stopping point and the shiny wall of tools that hangs between them.

Out on the track, Parker blurs past again, and MJ wonders if that’s good enough, if they’re getting close enough to make up from that first mistake, the precious minutes they lost with the stupid door that wouldn’t close.

One of the Catalysts passes them, ten or twenty seconds later, and the drivers battling it out with a dark green Empyrean—they’re both struggling with the weather and the low visibility, but the Empyrean is doing its best to block the Catalyst’s every move, swerving to cut him off every time he tries to pass, boxing him in against the rails—

_ Don’t do it,  _ MJ thinks.  _ Come on, don’t take the bait— _

The Catalyst guns for the Empyrean, engine screaming, driving hard into the rain, and MJ can’t watch—

Just as the Jameson driver is about to overtake the Empyrean, the engine blows.

One second, and they’ve just lost a Jameson challenger.

MJ watches it happen with a dull sense of frustration.

Three Jameson cars left, now.

The Empyrean is surging ahead now, the driver clearly thrilled with his cheap victory, and MJ sees the same blur of blue and red streaming past the guardrails at the end of the lap—

Parker saw it happen, and now he’s coming for the Empyrean—

They help the Jameson driver off the track, and MJ clicks her stopwatch as Parker scorches past—

“Nice stopwatch,” Ned says, and MJ glances down at it, pretends at surprise.

On the other side of the wall, she can hear the Beck mechanics screaming at each other about missing tools, momentarily distracted from the chaos out on the track.

“You like it?” she asks, and passes him one of her spares. “It was a gift.”

“I’ll send Beck a thank-you note.” Ned pockets the stopwatch with a grin, and they stand there in the dark and the pouring rain as the cars out on the track go tearing around, around, around—

Parker’s gunning for the Empyrean, no doubt about it.

The Catalyst drives the Empyrean hard up against the rails, rotors glowing, heat roaring from the exhaust pipe as Parker downshifts, pulling even faster—

He catches the Empyrean right as they enter the Mulsanne straight.

The Empyrean tries the same routine that knocked the Jameson out of the running, tries to push Parker to the inside, box him in—

MJ holds her breath, and Parker doesn’t brake until the last possible second.

The Empyrean isn’t quite so lucky.

The driver waits a second too long to brake, hydroplanes on the slick asphalt, plunges straight off the track and into the darkness beyond as Parker screams around the first bend, disappears off down the track.

“No. 32,” the announcer says politely. “Off the track—an unidentified Jameson closing in—”

The rain’s backed off a little, now, just enough that MJ can actually see her way clear to the leaderboard when she looks that way.

Gutenberg is still in the lead.

Of course he is.

Any lead that Thompson may have gained at the beginning was lost, second by painful second, during the relief driver’s turn behind the wheel, and now Beck is running first and second, with Jameson in third—

Parker’s Catalyst is the Jameson vehicle in third.

He’s gaining on the Beck lead.

But not fast enough.

The ringing of the pit phone startles MJ out of her calculations, and she looks over in time to see one of the mechanics pick it up, listen for a few moments—

Out on the track, Parker’s scrapping it out with the second-place Beck car.

MJ is dimly aware of the commentator remarking on the dangerous speed, the difficult terrain even now that the rain’s starting to slow—

The Beck car double clutches, downshifts, and the Catalyst matches each movement, pushing both vehicles faster and faster—

The mechanic who answered the phone moves past MJ holds up a sign as both cars approach—

_ EZ,  _ the sign reads, and Ned’s shouting at the mechanic to get the sign down, what does he think he’s  _ doing _ —

Parker must see the sign.

There’s no way he can miss it.

But he hits the throttle, tears away going even faster, and this time MJ answers the ringing pit phone before one of the crew can get to it—

“MJ,” Brad says, working so hard to sound relaxed that it ends up sounding almost painful instead. “MJ, what is he doing?”

“Well, Brad,” MJ says. “I’m pretty sure he’s trying to win the damn race. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

Brad hangs up without another word, and MJ rolls her eyes, slots the phone back onto its hook.

She checks her stolen stopwatch as another lap screams by at a blistering pace—

Three minutes and eighteen seconds.

Parker’s  _ lapping  _ at just a few seconds over the Le Mans old track record.

The rain’s still spattering up off the track, and Parker and the Beck driver are still fighting for second place.

Parker wins the high-speed battle, but it costs him.

He takes one of the turns too fast, or maybe he’s just been pushing the car for too hard for too long, but he finally breaks free of the second-place Mistero, surges hard towards Gutenberg, gaining on him—

MJ’s leaning out over the wall, unable to look away as the space between the two cars closes by an inch-two inches—one foot, and then another—

The Catalyst shudders, and MJ feels her blood run cold.

Parker downshifts, but he’s not slowing down as he rounds the turn, still moving blink-fast, and for a second, his wheels are off the track, and MJ’s frozen in horror—

Gutenberg guns even further ahead, triumphant—a wisp of steam curls off the Mistero hood, but MJ only barely registers it, she’s too busy staring at Parker as the car starts to slow—slows down beyond what they can allow—

“He’s bringing it in!” Ned realizes, and the slower cars are blurring past Parker as he fights to control the wheel. “Something’s wrong—”

The Catalyst rolls into the pit at a crawl, and Parker leaps out, hands shaking as he fumbles for his helmet.

“The braking’s gone!” he shouts, and the engineers crowd around as he pushes his way clear. “Just gone, completely gone—there’s nothing there at all!”

Someone slides underneath the hood of the car, and everyone in the pit is shouting, jostling for a chance to get at the brake system—

“I had him,” Parker hisses, and MJ follows his gaze, sees Gutenberg blur past—another perfect lap—“I almost had him.”

“That’s another lap on us,” MJ says, helpless, and Ned’s shouting orders to the engineers—

They’re going to swap the brakes.

Ned was joking, after that collision back in LA, but they can’t risk putting good brakes back in a bad system, and the fastest engine in the world won’t be worth a thing if they can’t slow it down, can’t make those turns—

Up in the Beck press box, Quentin Beck has clearly noticed what they’re doing, and he snaps an order to one of his assistants, who crosses to the press phone and dials in a righteous fury.

They’ve got less than a minute, MJ guesses, before the race officials come rushing out to put a stop to this, and she watches nervously as the mechanics hoist the Catalyst up, slide underneath, tear at the braking system, they built it just for this situation—

“Hurry!” Ned’s shouting. “Come on, hurry it up, let’s go!”

MJ pushes a mug of coffee at Parker, because he might as well make use of the time they’ve got—

Gutenberg laps them again, an easy, effortlessly dazzling show of speed, and Parker’s eyes trace the gleaming Mistero as it blurs past, a desperate sort of hunger burned across his expression—

The mechanics lock the brand new braking system into place just as the corridor door flies open and the race officials charge in. 

“This is an clearly an illegal modification—”

“Gentlemen,” MJ says, fighting to keep her cool. “According to the Le Mans guidebook—”

“You can’t allow this!” the Beck representative snaps, and MJ glances over her shoulder into the pit, past where she’s buttonholed the racing officials. “This is a clear and deliberate ignorance of Le Mans regulations—”

“Actually,” MJ says. “If you look at the specific language used—”

“Are you really going to let this slide on a  _ technicality _ —”

“Miss, I’m afraid we really can’t allow—”

“Marshal, you can’t let them flout the regulations like this—”

MJ can see some of the Beck crew stealing glances at the commotion, hiding smiles and clearly enjoying the spectacle, and she’s  _ done. _

“Show me in the rulebook,” she snaps, fumbles for the volume that she maybe brought to Le Mans for this exact reason, shoves it at the nearest official. “Show me where it says that a racer is not allowed to swap out the upright assembly—a part is a part, right?”

The racing official opens his mouth to respond, but she doesn’t give him a chance.

“A part is a part,” she insists. “Be it a brake caliper, a rotor, or an upright assembly, so someone had better give us a  _ hell  _ of a reason why we can’t swap out any  _ part  _ that we  _ damn well please! _ ”

The Beck representative sputters, furious.

“ _ Show me,”  _ MJ hisses, and the racing official blinks first.

They can’t, of course.

There’s nothing against it in the rulebook.

It’s just never been done before.

“That’s what I thought,” MJ snaps, and she spins on her heel, marches back into the pit while the Beck representative fumes helplessly.

Back inside, they’ve almost finished the swap.

They’ve almost finished the swap—

And Gutenberg pits the Mistero.

The steam that MJ barely noticed, it’s rolling out under the hood in great, billowing clouds now, and the Beck team leaps into action as Gutenberg slams his helmet down on the frame, furious.

Parker’s on his feet in a second, staring hungrily.

“If we get you out before him,” MJ says, and he says, “Just two laps. We just have to lap him twice—”

The Beck crew isn’t laughing at the cheap entertainment from the Jameson team anymore.

They’re scrambling to check the engine, fix whatever’s gone wrong with the Mistero’s steaming engine.

“Two laps,” Parker says. “Just need two laps—Ned, get me out of here!”

The wheels are back on the Catalyst, and Parker guns the engine, shoots back out onto the track.

Gutenberg’s back in the Mistero’s cockpit thirty seconds later, and the Beck crew relaxes until they find the extra bolt that MJ tossed in front of the pit when they weren’t looking, lose their entire minds trying to figure out where the hell it came from—

“This has to work,” Ned says, and MJ ignores the chaos next door, watches Parker pick up speed. “Tell me it’ll work.”

Two laps.

They just need two laps.

It’s still dark, but dawn is only an hour or so away, and they just need two laps—

Parker is trailing Gutenberg on the straightaway, testing his brakes, and he doesn’t trust it, isn’t confident just yet, and Gutenberg’s pulling away—

“He doesn’t trust the brakes,” Ned mutters, and MJ says, “He will.”

Parker enters the Mulsanne, opens the Catalyst, engine running full bore—

_ 220,  _ MJ thinks, watching the numbers on the leaderboard.  _ 222—223— _

Parker pulls towards Gutenberg, hairpin turn racing towards them, and Parker will brake early, MJ knows, because the Catalyst’s heavier, needs more time to slow—

The turn’s coming up fast now.

Neither car is braking.

Neither car is braking, and MJ realizes she’s clinging to the wall with an iron grip—

Gutenberg brakes first.

Parker shoots past him, slams the brake, and the tires scream, wheels locking, rubber burning—the Catalyst goes skidding into the turn, sliding sideways, rear breaking loose to the right—

Parker stomps on the gas, and the Catalyst takes the lead.

_ One lap down,  _ MJ thinks, and her hands are starting to hurt where she’s white-knuckling the pit wall.  _ Just one more lap— _

Gutenberg, clearly enraged, slams through the gears, engine revving wildly, races to catch up with Parker, but the Catalyst is already disappearing around the turn, so far ahead in the distance—

Parker blurs past the pit, and the entire Jameson crew is screaming, shouting, cheering him faster, faster still—

“He’s not done yet!” Ned yells over the triumph. “He still needs another lap!”

Parker weaves through the other cars at a breakneck speed, closing on Gutenberg, and Gutenberg must know the score, must know that he only needs to stay ahead—

Parker’s pushing the Mistero now, and both cars are shredding through their paces, pushing each other faster and faster, and faster—

The Catalyst inches ahead, just an inch, and the Mistero surges forward desperately, snatches the lead back again—it’s Parker, and then it’s Gutenberg, and MJ doesn’t know how long the engine can take it, doesn’t know how much longer either machine can keep this up—

The Catalyst inches ahead once more—

The Mistero surges to try and recover—

And then—

And then—

There’s a noise like a gunshot, the Mistero falls back in a haze of smoke and steam, and the Catalyst leaps forward, charges through the empty space on its right—

Gutenberg’s blown the engine.

Parker is in the lead.

Everyone around her is screaming, shouting, nearly crying with laughter, and MJ tackles Ned in a hug, reaches wildly for the rest of the crew, hands shaking and knees weak, and she’s laughing, too, she realizes, desperate and disbelieving—

Parker’s in first place.

_ Parker’s in first place _ , MJ thinks, uncomprehending, and the leaderboard changes, flashing out the news for the crowd—

Parker’s in first place, and Gutenberg blew his engine, and Jameson Motor Company is running one, two, and three in the Twenty-Four Hours at Le Mans.

Jameson lands in a helicopter, forty minutes before the end of the race.

MJ has to go up to meet him, of course, and she’s vaguely aware that she probably looks like a mess, but she can’t bring herself to care, so she just pulls her hair back, twists it up in a bun and leaves the pit crew jacket behind to go and play nice with the other executives.

“Mr. Jameson,” she says, and doesn’t even try to wipe the smile off her face. “Jameson Motor Company holds the top three slots. We’ve won.”

Jameson beams.

“Of course we have!” he booms, like there was never a doubt, like this project hasn’t taken a whole year and a half of her  _ life— _

MJ lets herself savor the moment, lets herself feel warm and fuzzy about the whole Jameson Motor Company in general.

“Who’s in front?” Jameson asks Brad, and MJ’s day just really could not get any better—

“Parker and Carter,” Brad says, and then he says, “You know, sir, I was thinking—”

MJ’s good mood evaporates in an instant.

“Wouldn’t it be  _ great _ ,” Brad says. “Wouldn’t it be great if all  _ three _ Jameson cars crossed the line, all at the same time? Like lining up and coming home. Together. Jameson all the way—”

“No,” MJ says. “No, I don’t think we can do that.”

Brad smiles, because  _ damn him,  _ it’s a  _ good idea— _

“Why not?” he asks, innocent, and she glares.

“Parker is  _ laps  _ ahead,” MJ says, turning to Ford. “He’d have to slow down to a crawl—”

“What’s any of this got to do with Parker?” Brad asks, and MJ could kill him, she really could.

“ _ Brad, _ ” she says, desperate, and he turns back to Jameson.

“What do you think, Mr. Jameson. It’d be the perfect end to all of this, wouldn’t it? The perfect ending.”

Jameson thinks it over, pictures the photo it would make—

When MJ gets back down to the pit, her hands are shaking.

Her hands are shaking, and she clasps them together behind her back, tries to hide it.

Parker is sitting back on the cot, white as a sheet and plainly exhausted.

Ned comes to meet her in the corridor, hands her another mug of coffee, and he’s got a matching set of dark rings under his eyes.

“What did Jameson have to say?” he asks.

MJ looks past him to where she can still see Parker, clutching his own coffee cup in both hands, staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes.

Carter’s taking the Catalystaround and around the track, and MJ knows she should just tell them now.

Rip the band-aid off, get it over with, be done with the whole thing.

Instead, she tears her gaze away from Parker, watches as Carter blurs past, maintaining the easy lead.

“Nothing important,” she says, and heads for the pit wall, hands shaking once more as the pit phone begins to ring. “Just make sure nobody touches that phone.”

“Something’s wrong,” Parker says, leaning on the wall beside her and staring out at the track.

“No,” MJ says, and doesn’t even manage to convince herself. “No, nothing’s—why would you think something’s wrong?”

“You’re not pacing,” Parker says, like it’s obvious. “You’re usually pacing by now, and you’re not, so either means everything’s okay or something’s really, really wrong.”

“Nope,” MJ says, and ignores the way that the pit phone is still ringing off the hook. “Nope, everything’s fine.”

They almost make it.

Carter’s just started his last lap, they’ve got three minutes left in his leg, and Parker’s pulling on his gloves, fiddling with his helmet—

“There you are!” Brad says, cheerful, and MJ almost screams. “Must be something wrong with the pit phone, we’ve been trying to reach you—”

“ _ Brad, _ ” MJ says, and he ignores her completely. “Brad, come on, please—”

Ned’s there, too, looking between them, confused. “What’s going on?”

“Didn’t MJ tell you?” Brad pulls an innocent face, like he can’t understand why she hasn’t. “Parker, Jameson’s  _ thrilled  _ with how well the Catalyst’s doing, he can’t wait for the perfect finishing shot!”

“The perfect finishing shot,” Parker echoes. “What do you mean?”

Brad takes his time, savoring his victory.

“You’re four minutes ahead of Thompson,” he says, and MJ can’t make herself look at Parker. “Jameson wants the three Catalysts to cross the line at the same time. Think of the  _ picture  _ it’ll make.”

Parker is very quiet for almost a whole minute.

When Brad leaves, he’s still standing there, holding his helmet in both hands.

“That’s good,” he says, reluctant. “You have to admit, it’s a pretty good play. Even for him.”

“Peter,” Ned says. “Even with a three-way tie, you’d still have the triple crown. Daytona, Sebring, Le Mans—even with a tie, you still win the triple crown.”

Parker looks exhausted, like trying to calculate anything at all after 24 hours on the track is almost beyond him.

Then he looks over at MJ, looks at her like he’s afraid of the answer.

“And if I say no?” he asks.

_ If you say no— _

“Parker,” MJ says, and she doesn’t look up towards the press box, to where she knows that Brad will be waiting. “Whatever you decide—it’s up to you. Your choice.”

She could tell him to do it.

She could tell him to slow down, let the other cars lap him.

She won’t, though.

_ She won’t— _

“My choice,” Parker says, weary.

Carter pulls the Catalyst into the pit, and Parker pulls his helmet on, helps the other man out of the driver’s seat.

“How’s she handling?” he asks, and the other driver looks as spent as the rest of them, pale and tired and grim.

“Running at boiling,” he says, and then, with a bit of a smile—“Brakes are shot.”

That pulls a smile out of Parker, too, and he huffs out a breath of air that could almost be a laugh.

“Alright,” he says. “Alright.”

“Well?” Brad asks, and MJ can’t look at him anymore. “Well, what did he say? Did he agree?”

“Brad,” MJ sighs, and she’s so tired of all of it. “Seriously, Brad, just give it a rest.”

Brad draws himself up, offended, and she watches him with a vague feeling of detachment.

“MJ,” he says. “This is the future of Jameson racing, it’s not something we can leave up to chance—”

MJ’s back up at the press box for one more check-in with Jameson, and all the executives are buzzing, chattering about what a great opportunity this is going to be, how it’s going to push sales.

Brad’s still talking, but MJ just turns and walks away.

“MJ!” he shouts after her, and God, but why does everything have to turn into such a scene? “For once—just for once, would you think about the whole company?”

MJ laughs out loud, but she doesn’t stop walking. 

For the last year and a half, all she’s  _ done  _ is think about the company.

She just wasn’t thinking about it the same way that Brad was, so that’s apparently unforgivable.

She makes it back down to the pit in a bit of a daze, shakes her head when Ned starts to press her for information on what happened upstairs.

“It’s up to Parker,” she says, and he accepts it, settles back. “Whatever else happens, it’s all up to him, now.”

Out on the track, Parker’s still flying, weaving around the slower cars that cross his path, streaking past the debris and bits of metal that still dot the track, not slowing down—

He’s not slowing down.

There are only a few more laps left, and Beck isn’t even on the leaderboard anymore, it’s just Jameson, Jameson all the way.

Parker’s not slowing down, and the pit phone begins to ring again, a shrill, insistent noise that breaks the almost-reverent silence of the pit crew.

One of the mechanics crosses the pit, goes to answer, and MJ tears her attention away from the track, focuses back on the present, on the here and now—

“Don’t answer that!” she snaps, and the mechanic pauses, looks between her and Ned, uncertain.

“But,” he says, just a little nervous. “But it could be important—”

“It’s not,” she promises, and he still doesn’t look convinced, so she glares at him until he takes a step back, apparently on instinct. “Don’t answer it.”

One of the other engineers shifts uneasily. “But what if Jameson—”

MJ crosses the pit in three strides, tears the phone down from off the wall, and rips the power cord out of the back—

The ringing stops.

“There,” MJ says, and dares anyone to say anything. “Technical difficulties.”

Ned says, “MJ—”

“If it’s too important to wait, Jameson can come down and tell us himself.”

Ned just looks at her for another long moment, and she shrugs.

“It’s his choice, Ned,” she says, one more time. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

Only a few laps left now.

Everyone in the Jameson pit is standing, straining against the wall and staring eagerly, hungrily.

The crowd is cheering all around them, but the Jameson pit crew is silent.

Parker blurs past the starting line for what feels like the millionth time, hits the Mulsanne straight and opens the engine, faster and faster, so that he’s just a blur between the trees.

He slingshots into the final straight at two hundred and sixty-two miles per hour, pushes faster now, flying between the rails.

_ There’s a brow there—can’t be helped—take the jump, but don’t damage the car— _

MJ’s back in LA, back in the office in the dead of night, and she’s watching Parker trace the map of Le Mans, careful and reverent and so completely certain.

_ Take the jump— _

The Catalyst passes one of the other racecars—two other drivers—three, four, five—

_ Then you’ve got the hairpin—lot of cars go into the sand here, oil and fuel on the track— _

Parker takes the hairpin turn at a blinding speed, holds the car steady through the next bend, surging forward with no one else in sight—

_ More trees—accelerate to Arnage, brake, another sandbank of dead cars, and then there’s a winding top speed stretch— _

Parker twitches out, threads between the kinks like a bullet, just making the Apex into the final corner.

_ Over the rise to the White House—past the pits, through the grandstand, over the line— _

The Catalyst screams past, and the crowd is on its feet, a roar like a thousand engines, and MJ can barely hear the announcer calling out the time—

“Three minutes and eleven seconds!” the announcer cries, like he can hardly believe it, like he’s never seen anything like it.

He hasn’t.

No one has.

“A new record!” the announcer shouts, and the day’s been full of new records, but this is something different, something special. “Jameson No. 7  _ shatters  _ the record set by the same team just four hours earlier—”

_ The perfect lap. _

Beside her, Ned’s got both his hands clamped tight over his mouth, and if MJ didn’t know better, she’d think he was crying.

She looks up at the press box.

She can’t help herself.

Through the glass, glinting strangely in the early morning light, she can see Jameson, arms raised high, and he looks like he did back on the runway in LA, when he dragged himself out of the Catalyst and whispered that he’d never known, he’d never guessed—

And Brad is there, somehow, wrenching on her arm, shouting to be heard above the noise.

“—out of control!” he’s saying, face red with fury. “He breaks that car, we won’t finish. Bring him in, or I swear to God, MJ, this is the last time you’ll see any track larger than  _ Willow Springs— _ ”

MJ doesn’t hear him—can’t hear him.

Out on the track, Parker’s winging away down the Mulsanne straight, and she can’t tear her eyes from the red and blue Catalyst, battered and stained and still dented from where Ned had to smash it with a hammer—

_ The perfect lap. _

He’s got one more lap left, just one more lap, and the other two Catalysts are miles behind.

Miles don’t matter, not at this speed, but the other two cars are so very far behind—the rest of the pack is so far behind—

It’s just Parker, just that tired No. 7 Jameson, flying down the track, completely alone and not a single other challenger in sight.

They’ve done it.

They’ve won.

They’ve won, and Brad’s vanished somewhere to go lick his wounds, and they’ve won, and MJ’s hanging on to Ned’s shoulder, squeezing hard enough to cut off the circulation, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and they’ve  _ won _ —

Out on the track, the Catalyst is flying, and the engine is still roaring, joyful and arrogant as it was at the start.

It’s the perfect moment.

The perfect victory.

And Parker slows down.

At first, MJ doesn’t even notice it, the Catalyst is so far ahead of the second and third runners.

But the distance between the three cars shifts, shrinks by degrees, grows smaller, and then smaller—

In the stands, a few of the spectators start to boo.

Not at Parker.

People are looking towards the Jameson booth, and they must know what’s going on, they must know what Jameson has done.

Slowly, slowly, the distance between the three cars closes.

Parker in the middle, Thompson on his right, all three cars pacing each other, inch for inch, each car matching the other’s speed perfectly.

“It’s okay,” Ned says, and MJ realizes she’s crying. “It’s alright. We said it was up to him—"

The voices in the crowd are cheering again—some of them are still angry, but they must see what this is, surely they must know how much it cost, because they’re cheering, spurring the racers on through the last leg of the day-long trial—

Ned’s crying, too.

The Jameson pit is silent, reverent, and MJ can’t look away from the track long enough to check, but she doesn’t feel too stupid for getting teary-eyed over the spectacle of it, because it’s not like she’s the only one, not by a long shot—

The announcer is calling the race order as the cars make their final approach, and the words curl uselessly around the back of MJ’s mind, she’s hardly listening long enough to pick out individual phrases—

The Catalysts are in parallel—the drivers must be able to see each other, that close, and MJ wonders what each of them sees as they scream towards the line on the ground—

It’s just another marker.

At the end of the day, that’s all it is.

Just another marker.

All three Jameson Catalysts cross the finish line at the exact same moment, and the crowd erupts into a deafening roar, wild and cacophonic.

The race is over.

Jameson wins.

At first, MJ doesn’t hear the argument.

People are pouring out onto the field, swarming the Catalysts, still cheering loud enough to wake the dead.

Thompson helps Parker out of the car, hugs him in front of the grandstand, and Parker pulls Hill in, too, so that the three of them are leaning on each other, exhausted.

The three longest races in the world, and two of them have been with this same crew of drivers, and so they all lean on each other as the well-wishers swarm around them, patting them on the back and shouting questions too loud to be heard.

MJ comes back to herself by degrees, and that’s when she hears the argument.

Ned is shouting at someone, angrier than she’s ever seen—angrier than she even knew he could be—and the poor racing official is holding up his clipboard like a shield, defensive and slightly terrified—

“But he was ahead!” he roars, and MJ feels her heart stop. “He was ahead the whole time, we all saw it—”

“What’s going on?” MJ asks, and Ned turns to stare at her through wild eyes—

“Thompson started further back,” he says, shattered. “Thompson traveled further for the finish line—”

MJ doesn’t understand.

She doesn’t understand—

And then she does.

She shoves her way through the crowd, and Ned is chasing after her, calling her back, but she doesn’t hear him, she can’t even hear him—

Brad has just enough time to look surprised when MJ grabs him by the front of his jacket—he’s a good head taller than she is, but she’s nearly shaking with rage, and it’s enough to let her hurl him up against the corridor wall, teeth bared and mind racing—

“You  _ knew!”  _ she snarls, and he stammers about for a response. “You  _ knew,  _ didn’t you?  _ Didn’t you?  _ That was why you suggested it!”

There are people getting between them, pulling her off of him, and she’s going to kill him, she’s going to kill him where he stands—

“MJ,” Brad starts to say. “I—”

“ _ You knew. _ ” 

It’s all she can make herself say, and she pours all of her helpless fury into those two words, like a verdict. 

“You bastard,” she says, and Ned is still trying to pull her backwards, away from the wall. “You knew.” 

_ You have to run to your car at Le Mans. _

Thompson’s car started further back.

Parker was No. 7, Thompson was No. 32.

It wasn’t a tie.

It was never going to be a tie.

The race doesn’t start at the starting line.

The race starts before the drivers even get to their cars, and today—today, the race ended before the first car ever squealed off the grid and out onto the track.

_ Actually, the race starts there—you have to run to your car— _

_ I’m just saying, the race starts before the starting line— _

The race is over.

Jameson has won.

Thompson has won.

Parker finishes in second place.

MJ’s still numb with shock, but the announcer reads the results over the loudspeaker, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

To his credit, Thompson tries to fight it.

MJ watches him yelling at the race officials, arms waving wildly as he gestures to the leaderboard, and there are a bunch of other people shouting, too, but Parker just takes a step back, leans against the Catalyst and stares up at the numbers.

The leaderboard stares back down at them all, relentless, and MJ watches as Parker smiles, ducks his head for a second, and then pushes away from the car, steps between Thompson and the officials, claps the other man on the shoulder and shakes his hand.

The early morning light turns the whole scene into something illusory, something fleeting and impossible and golden.

Parker shakes Thompson’s hand, and Thompson’s still trying to argue, but it’s no use, and MJ can see Parker shaking his head, shrugging it off and grinning.

He sees her a second later, says something to the officials and starts fighting his way through the crowd, looking pale and haggard and about half a second away from passing out on the spot, but still smiling like it doesn’t matter, like nothing else matters—

“I’m sorry,” MJ says, as soon as he’s close enough to hear her, and he draws up, frowns like he can’t understand why she’d be apologizing.

“It was my choice,” he says, and MJ shakes her head.

“I had no idea,” she says, even though he must know that already. “I mean, if I’d known, I never would have told you.”

“MJ,” Parker says. “It was my choice.”

MJ wants to keep pushing it, wants to swear up and down that she didn’t mean for this to happen.

But Parker is standing just an arm’s reach away, helmet tucked under one arm, and the sun glints off the tarmac as it rises over the nearest line of trees.

“Alright,” she says, and lets herself believe that he means it. “Alright.”

“Besides,” Parker says, and he slings one arm over her shoulder, ostensibly as a gesture of camaraderie, but probably because he’ll fall over if he doesn’t. “You promised me the drive, not the win.”

MJ hums a little, allows him his little victory, and lets him lean on her as they start to make their way off the field.

“It was a hell of a drive,” she admits, and he laughs out loud, makes a show of false modesty.

“Hell of a machine,” he says, and she lets him have that, too.

Back in front of the grandstand, Jameson is raising Thompson’s fist in the air, shouting something that gets lost in the noise of the crowd, and MJ pauses, watches as Brad waves to the assembled reporters, smiling ear to ear.

“We’ll get them next year,” Parker says, like a promise.

“Yeah,” MJ says, and lets herself imagine it. “I think we probably will.”

They stand there in the glow of the early morning sun, and twelve months isn’t  _ really  _ a long time, not really, there’s a whole lot they can do between now and then to make the program really watertight—

“What happened to Brad’s nose?” Parker asks, and MJ squints at the man in question, sees the flecks where he hadn’t quite managed to scrub off all of the blood.

“Oh, that,” she says, and refuses to be embarrassed. “I think I hit him.”

Admittedly, it’s all kind of a blur.

“Huh,” Parker says, sounding impressed. “Nice.”

She’d shrug, but she doesn’t want to jostle him too much, not with the way his arm’s beginning to shake.

“We all have our talents,” she says instead, and he laughs.

_ “Peter!” _

A Ned-shaped blur hits them out of nowhere, almost knocks them both over, and MJ has to struggle to keep her footing as Ned crashes into them at top speed.

“That was  _ incredible!”  _ he cries, like the scoreboard doesn’t matter. “You should have seen yourself—”

Parker groans, dramatic, but he lets Ned duck under his other arm so that the three of them are moving slowly off the field as a single unit, Parker stumbling along between Ned and MJ.

“I did see it,” he points out. “I was there, Ned, remember?”

It’s not like they’re going to forget any time soon.

“Fastest car in the world,” Ned says, wondering, as they finally clear the field, make their way towards the crew that’s still waiting in the pit. “We did it.”

“We did it,” Parker agrees, and MJ says, “Yeah, I guess so.”

For a moment, everything is silent, everything is still, and MJ can feel Parker’s heart beating against her side, can feel each breath that shudders through his lungs, ragged with soot and ash and fatigue—and she’s so tired, too, can’t remember the last time she sat down long enough to  _ be  _ tired, and Ned must be the same.

Behind them, somewhere far away, Jameson is making yet another grand speech, and people are still cheering for Thompson, shouting his name over and over and over again.

_ Fastest car in the world. _

_ We did it. _

But then Parker, in a voice that sounds like it’s trying to hide a smile, says, “Could be faster, though.”

MJ laughs out loud, and Ned groans.

“Five minutes,” he protests. “Let me at least—I don’t know, eat a sandwich or something—take a shower—”

“I’m serious,” Parker insists, but he’s fighting not to laugh, too. “I was thinking bonded aluminum—it’d be a ground-up rebuild, but we could lose a couple hundred pounds—we could make the whole thing  _ so much faster—” _

“You know, it’s funny,” MJ says, and the sun off the tarmac is almost bright enough to be blinding. “I was about to say the same exact thing.”

  
  


_ (“Okay, let’s just—let’s just think this through, yeah? Forget the time, forget the ninety days. Let’s say you have all the time in the world—all the money in the world—”) _

_ ("Alright, let me guess. You're here to change my mind.") _

_ ("Get up, clean yourself off, and let’s go. We’ve got work to do.") _

_ ("So. What are we looking for now?") _

  
  
  


_ ("You can see that?" _

_ "Sure. You can't?") _

  
  
  


"Ready?"

"No," MJ says, and looks out through the windshield at the empty runway, glinting strangely in the late afternoon sun. "No, I'm not ready."

Parker nods, very serious.

But then he says, "Need me to hold your hand?" and MJ glares.

"Shut up, Parker."

"Promise we won't go one inch over 250."

"Not helping. This is really not helping."

"And Ned says this roll cage is  _ definitely _ safer than the last one—"

"Oh my God, I'm getting out of the car."

MJ goes for the door handle, and Parker laughs, tries to tug her back—

"Okay, I'm sorry," he says, but he's still grinning too wide to be able to pull off the innocent routine. "Wait, I'm sorry, don't leave."

MJ glares at him, and he holds up his hands, surrendering.

"Come on," he says, and sweeps one hand out in an arc, taking in the empty span of the runway around them. "Like there's something else you'd rather be doing."

"Answering emails," MJ says, immediate. "Filing taxes. Talking Ned through his breakup."

"I thought he and Betty were back together."

"No, they broke up on Tuesday."

"Seriously, again?"

"Seriously."

"Huh," Parker says, and drops his hands to the wheel once more. "Who knew?"

"Who knew," MJ echoes.

And she's not joking—not entirely, anyhow—she really  _ does _ have work she should probably be doing, emails that need answering and phone calls to return, and Jameson wants an update on the aluminum build, and do they think they'll be ready for Sebring, because they're only two weeks out—

Ned spends as much time in the office as she does, these days, floundering to keep from being swept off his feet by the flood of interest from around the world in the wake of Le Mans—

And there are forms to be filed and meetings to schedule and Analytics, back in New York, they've been calling every five seconds, it feels like, wanting to know what they're doing next, what their next move will be—

Around them, the sun streams out across the runway, too bright to look at head-on, casting long purple shadows that twist and stretch out across the asphalt behind them.

The Catalyst is rumbling, a low growl beneath them, familiar in its power, and MJ looks towards the sun, hanging low in the sky, looks until her eyes start to burn and she has to look away—

"So do we need more distracting small talk?" Parker asks, and MJ looks over, sees the light shining off of him, the way he's gripping the wheel too hard but trying to pretend he's relaxed. "Or are we ready?"

"Ready," MJ says, and is surprised to find that it's the honest-to-God truth. "Yeah, ready. Let's go—"

Parker floors it before the words are all the way out of her mouth, and MJ laughs out loud, startled and terrified and delighted—

The Catalyst surges up off the starting line, the engine a wordless shriek that shakes her down to the bone, and MJ laughs out loud as Parker stomps the gas pedal down to the floor, and the Catalyst tears down the empty runway, pulling hard for the line where the sun disappears over the road.


End file.
